


Bond/Q 'Hardly Christmas, Is It?'

by tigersilver



Category: James Bond (Movies), Sherlock (TV), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Crack, Crossover, Fluff, Fun, M/M, Porn With Plot, Spoilers for Skyfall, ooc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2013-09-02
Packaged: 2017-12-13 18:57:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 25,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/827695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigersilver/pseuds/tigersilver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Q is the 'Baby' Holmes sibling, and Bond attends Mummy's Christmas dinner, and there is Three Continents Watson, Sherlock is a jealous git, Mycroft makes a few discreet explanations, and oh, but 007 has had a checquered past, yes, but now it's all fluff and lollies, cheers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lonerofthepack](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonerofthepack/gifts).



'Baby' Holmes is not a particularly demonstrative soul; it runneth in the gene pool, as his elder brothers would say…if he let them. He doesn't. He has found it expedient to wear his earbuds all through Mummy's mandatory Christmas dinners, working within the sound principle that if he cannot actually physically hear the wankers, they cannot actually have said it. As with the adage 'if a tree falls in a forest and no witness: is silent', right?

Also, he feels it is quite objectionable of them, lumping him in them, when he is clearly a different breed of Holmes altogether.

Which does nothing and also everything to explain why he's in Sydney, when he despises flying, but there has arisen a certain question in his life and he needs an answer. There is a man who can provide that.

James, as Q prefers to think of him (referring to people by their surnames or their numbers is impolite, he feels, when they've been properly introduced and a bloke is actually attracted to them) is the man to see about this cur of a quandary Q's got nipping at his mental ankles. Accordingly, he adjusts his magnetic bands he wears at his wrists to combat airsickness and settles into wait patiently, passing the time pleasantly enough by sampling the hotel's minibar and having a tweaking go at the updated, highly-dimensional version of Solitaire he's invented. And he'd chosen to fuck around with the deceptively simple game of Solitaire, obviously, as Q's come recently to truly appreciate the classics, all manner of them.

"Q?"

Sadly, like his brothers, Q is not overly fond of people stating the obvious. Of course it is he; who else would it be? However, it is a human enough reaction, he supposes, to express surprise, even if one is 007. James is instantly forgiven.

James, who looks very dashing in his jogger's garb, his pecs and abs and all that manly fit goodness outlined in skin-tight dark spandex, has somehow magically managed to conceal his PPK despite the lack of pockets or a holster. He drops his arm down and re-conceals his government-issued weapon, possibly tucking it away up his ramrod straight back—or between the magnificent pair of arse cheeks his tog displays to such perfection—and turns completely away, presenting his visitor with a eye-widening view of his backside. Q thinks that's rather magical, too.

The trick with the pistol and the backside, that is. But that's not at all why Q is in Sydney, or rather, it's a tiny part of it.

If Q differs from his elder brothers, it's perhaps due to the fact he, alone, possesses a highly active, extremely vivid imagination. And he's not afraid to use it, and for that the tossers call him a dizzy dreamer.

"What are you doing here, Q?" James asks of him, easing into the hotel room's open-ended sitting area like a smooth flow of fine Bombay gin down a parched throat, door firmly secured at his back. "Is there a development?"

Q wobbles a bit. He's perched cross-legged on the bed, right in the centre of its massive expanse, and it's possible he should've eaten something more substantial before opening up the little coolbox containing complimentary alcohol and diving in.

"No. Not that. Isn't it obvious?"

But he'd rather wanted the Dutch courage. James has exhibited only a very few slight signs of physical interest in Q thus far. A very subtle tail-sniffing, in fact, if one continues the metaphor. Sufficient, naturally, for Q to overcome his reluctance to climb aboard a giant metal box and fling himself into the air with it; enough, also, to cast aside his innate dread of rejection and have a stumbling bow at a venture.

Q works under the postulation that if he can envision it—or if someone can—it is entirely possible, whatever 'it' is.

"You're stalled, aren't you?" he adds after a little pause, doing his best to enunciate his 'esses' clearly. "Waiting for intel. As are we."

Just like bloody Sherlock, 'Baby', as his siblings disgustingly refer to him all too often, owns up to the Holmes's family tendency slip towards lisping when nervous.

"More, I'm here to s-stave off your inevitable boredom. A favour."

"My…boredom?" James's eyebrows go way up as he goes about casually stripping off, flinging his gear over a convenient chair back as he does it. "Why would you think I was dull, Q? Or care."

Q blinks at him, feeling his mouth fill with an uncomfortable gush of saliva. He's lovely, is James Bond, and Q would have to be utterly mental to deny it. And he's clearly on his way to the suite's luxe lavatory for a refreshing shower, and there is nothing more in the wide world Q would fancy than being invited to join him.

"Well, you're not, yet, no," Q replies, his hands already upon his own shirt buttons, his laptop neatly set aside and out of harm's way. He fumbles down the series, undoing them, his eyes on James's inquisitive features. "But you will be. You've not exactly been on your usual trolling session for the birds, have you? No time to spare. Tedious."

"Au contraire, my dear Q." James pauses at the loo door, and Q can plainly see his prick is half-erect and therefore may be deduced to be in that condition called 'interested'. "I don't require extra time."

There's no one else in the suite but James and Q, and Q also knows for certain James hasn't arranged an assignation for later. The upwards jerk to that brilliant cock must therefore exist solely for his benefit.

"…No?"

Q finds that so encouraging he scrabbles off the bed entirely, shucking his trousers and pants hurriedly as he goes, leaving his shirt half-unbuttoned.

"Not for that," James replies, quite, quite simply, as to a mere infant, but nodding in an approving manner at Q's progress in discarding his clothing. Q's already bare-footed, so he only stumbles only a little over the coil of his own belt as he makes his way towards this very lethal Crown's agent who has got him so damned flustered. "They seem to rather want to come to me, don't they?"

He smiles, and the burning in Q's veins is far more intoxicating than the alcohol he's ingested.

"Birds and blokes both, really."

"Urr," Q grunts his agreement, a hot-palmed hand already fast on that bloody gorgeous dick wagging as he drops to his knees on the carpet. Thank god for the padding; he's young and spry but the joints of a man's legs are a known weak area. "Auh-ummmm….hhngh!"

Q wastes no further time in the happy task of alleviating James's potential fit of the doldrums.

He's purring, Q is. Or at least that's the low gargling sound he hears coming from his own throat, over the thud of his own heart beat—very daring, this—and the faintest whispery brush-sweep of neatly trimmed pubes against his nose and questing lips. And he's making that other godawful whingey noise he knows he issues sometimes: high-pitched, nasal and needy, and all about the fact he's swallowing down James's cock as fast as he can manage.

"Auuungh."

"Oh," he hears above his head, and if he's purring, then James is most definitely begun growling, in a deep sexy rumble. A satisfied sort of sound, like a giant cat having a bit of a surprise petting. "You're rather good at that, Q; thank you."

Q declines to answer. James is a mouthful and then also requires a grip below that, just to prevent Q from gagging to death on his girth. He doesn't fumble it, though.

"But. That'll do, I think."

Two hands settle into Q's hair, fingertips spreading gently across his scalp as they prise his greedy lips away and tilt up his jaw sufficient so James can glint a brilliant blue gaze at him, teasing. Always teasing, damn the blighter.

"Now, now, ease off now if you want more of that later, young man. I'm not some spring chicken, you know. Patience."

"Err-ooop?"

Q peeps up, realizing vaguely he's had his eyes shut tight for several minutes, whilst sucking, so the electric blue stare is a bit dazzling, if warm in nature. Still, he gulps hard, disappointed. James's tone is vastly encouraging, yes, but there's more to this than a fling in a foreign hotel room. For Q, at least. Again, Q does not set foot in Heathrow on a whim, ever.

"James. You…?" he ventures, warily, worried gaze on the twist of a firm mouth several feet above his rumpled head and his slightly askew specs. They're smudged by his own saliva and the perspiration caught in James's pubes; it's a bit unnerving but also very…good, seeing James through a haze of bodily fluids. "…Um. You."

There's a wealth of fretful fore-thinking, and perhaps a giant jot of over-thinking, pre-thinking and free-thinking, all jammed tight into that one syllable.

"I?" James smiles down at Q. "Am amply flattered, Charlemagne Holmes. Come."

Q goes, hastily. And wincing in trepidation. If James should call him 'Charlie' or—god forbid!—'Chaz', he'll simply commit seppuku, shag or no shag on the horizon.

But no such thing. James can also manage tactful, it seems. Just one more reason among many.

Q sighs, his wrist caught in James's hard grasp.

"Q, come."

The shower enclosure is indeed appropriate for the calibre of the hotel he'd booked James into, days before. Seven different metal heads produce rainfalls of water, jets, sauna steam and sprinkley trickles. There's dispensers of a bewilderingly unnecessary abundance. And a tiled bench seat, which James pushes Q down on, albeit gently.

"Sorry about your shirt, then," he murmurs and, when Q hesitantly reaches to undo his final button, his hand comes up to stay Q's trembling fingers. "No—leave it. I like you like this, Q. Debauched is a good look on you, little one."

"I—I! I am not little!"

Q's is momentarily outraged. All the Holmes boys are tallish, certainly not at all shrimpy or wee like that cut-off ex-Army bloke Sherly fancies. Of all things, he is certainly not vertically challenged and he's pretty certain he's got an inch or more on James. He is a bit brain-dead, though, and that he'll admit, as there's that cock of 007's, fully armed, no safety, and aimed straight at his face.

"Not what I meant, Q."

"Um." Q ignores that. He is so seldom at loss for words, he can't afford to be, really, but this is shattering, being so near that fine piece of succulence and also so far. He licks his lips, missing the saline taste rather fiercely. "Ah, m-may I?"

He means to add 'continue', but words really do fail him.

"No. Not yet." James is dreadfully calm, but he's also grinning as he tugs an errant dark curl. Q suffers a little aneurysm of love over that grin, and curses himself roundly for it, flushing. "But soon enough, yes. You may."

"…Okay."

"Down we go then. Hold still, will you, Q?"

James never wastes a moment. Q has noticed this phenomenon. He goes down on Q's cock like a very high-priced escort in the time it takes Q to gulp, swallow and forcibly remind himself he's the culpable one in this shower.

Well…Q may guilty of deliberately pulling a co-worker, flouting all the new M's unspoken directives, but James's mouth is as sinful as Hades a'fire—and as capable. How unexpected—oh, no, not. Not. Q should've known better, but oddly enough it hadn't really struck him, not to stick.

He's realizing the error of his ways in a matter of mere seconds.

"You—y-you've?" Q gasps stupidly, knowing he's gone all unattractively red, like a sour beet relish, but well beyond caring. "Done thith before, J-Jame'th?"

"Mmm."

Which isn't really an answer, not a proper one. Q slouches back against tile warmed by the insistent splash of hot water and blinks up at the cascade, blinded. If he looks at James's lips at work, he'll simply ejaculate in the instant and that would be a damned shame, wouldn't it?

"E'hem. I mean—James? James!"

This is fantastic, indeed, this unsuspected facility James possesses with both genders (maybe it's all genders; who'd have guessed?) but Q's not had his one prime query satsfied. He knows no more than before, really. He lacks data. For a purposeful man this is shaming, how little he's actually managed to deduce up to this point.

He'd be mocked for sure, by both the gits, if ever they were to deduce the manner of their baby brother's willing seduction.

Not that Q's really giving a sodding fuck at the moment about deduction. Evidence is very good, too.

The part of his mind that's spinning, spinning, spinning, at a velocity absolutely unimaginable by regular sorts, that specific part that eldest brother Mycroft smiles over, a bit tiredly, it knows this small hiccough of logical process Q is experiencing and shrinks back and away, stymied. The remainder of Q has no such compunction. He angles his hips forward and wide and groans as James grasps his knees, jerking his desperately swollen prick forward and urgently onward and probably poking at the very back of James's gullet uncomfortably.

"Oh, god, Jame'th, oh, pleathhhh, Jame'th!"

He's no idiot and Q knows for a fact James is forty-three years, six months plus several days swimming the time stream, predating Q's own birth marker by some not inconsequential amount. This man has not only just fucked the women, clearly, in all his time inhabiting the planet. He's shagged everyone and quite possibly every thing that's been expedient or of interest, or just possibly in the right place at the right time. And James's experience with men must've been cataclysmically orgiastic, at least for the receivers: the bloody man gives head like a very naughty Santa. He's both generous and sly, with a hint of that urbane smile. And he's furiously efficient as well.

Q goes stiff where he sits and comes quick enough to be ludicrously indecent, with eyes rolled back far in his head, a blustering sigh and a final shuddering jerk.

"Ohhh…." He can't breathe properly, not yet, but something verbal is required. "Oh, James!"

It strikes Q that if this is all he ever gets out of this impulsive interlude, this sucking off? He can expire happily, absolutely.. He may actually expire—this shower stall is decadently filled with water and steam and there's so much humidity in the air and so much blood banging through his arteries, he's most definitely light-headed.

"Time, I think," that smoked whisky voice groans into Q's fuzzy ear, the one with all the soggy hair covering it, never minding the drip-drip-drip or the tremours still coursing through Q's slim body. "Time, yes, for the next act. Up now, pet."

The hotel is high quality. One of the dispensers must dispense a lubrication substitute, and James has their positions deftly switched about, Q's aching bum balanced groggily across James's spread thighs, and has shoved a fingerful up Q's flinching hole in a matter of only a few damp, sweaty moments. Q's still shaking the water out his eyelashes when he jolts bolt upright, inhaling so hard his nostrils pinch.

" _Ohgod_."

"Allow me the favour."


	2. Chapter 2

James isn't waiting about for permission, though, and that's quite unmanning. And thrilling—and exhilarating. The water sprays on, endlessly warm, endlessly forgiving, and Q nearly swallows a gallon or two before he tucks his recently aired-out head upon James's scarred shoulder, nodding feebly. There's no words for this or to accurately express his deep gratification it's happening to him of all people; Q doesn't even bother himself over trying.

"Oh, thank you, little one," James chuckles. "Much obliged."

"I want…oh, I want?" Q thinks he might plead after a moment more, but the fingers—two, then three, just like that—are already twisting about, most effectively and much farther in. In a swirl and not as a scissors, and god fuck a bloody nun, but that's an exquisite adaptation, at least from Q's perspective. "…James…please?"

Fingers up his arse and a blowie aren't near enough, though. Not to justify the excruciatingly high altitude Q achieved for ghastly hours on end in the metal box-'o-doom simply to arrive unbesmirched in James's decadent shower.

"Mm?"

Q's trigger-ready again and he's only just come. It's a struggle to fashion anything coherent, what with his jaw gone all slack and James's lips sucking intently upon the sensitive skin of his neck, right 'neath his earlobe like that.

"…James?"

Now, how to put it politely? 'Oh, shag me, will you? Yesterday, damn it.' Or, 'Would you please get on with the fucking?' Possibly "If you don't stick your giant cock up my achy arse in the next three nanoseconds, I shall implode into a shower of enraged Q-particles?'

At least, Q thinks dizzily, he's got the full use of his consonants back, if only in his head. Then again, he'd always been damned brilliant when under pressure.

"Me," he says aloud, taking a passable stab at pointing in the right direction. "You." Giving that up for a bad job, he lays one trembling hand across James's chest and his other grips at James's thigh, rather frantically. "Now? Ugh!"

"Yes, of course, love," comes the murmuring reply of Q's midnight fantasies, and that's enough to have Q's well-sucked dick rousing forcefully to full mast. "Just a moment more."

And here he'd thought his personal recovery time was twenty minutes or more; how super to learn it could be considerably less—with the proper motivation.

Q is all about motivation, but James is steadily undermining his ability to recall his purpose.

"Mmm, good, sweet," he hums away in Q's ear, shifting about and providing more than enough incendiary motivation, the rat bastard. "You are a pretty little one, aren't you?" he adds, adjusting the fingers that insist on taking Q straight down to his naked component parts. "Look at you, with that perfect little arse, all ready for me. It's as if you were born for this, love. Amazing."

"Oh?" Praise has Q flushing, twinned high spots of colour staining the slash of his cheekbones. He squirms about, attempting to have a look at James's face. "Do you think s-so? Really?"

"Hmhm…"

Q decides he'll accept the pleased groan the murmur becomes as a 'yes'. He smirks, just briefly, and at nothing in particular before James has him rendered slack-jawed once more. It occurs to Q—on the very outer periphery of his brain—that James is both shaking and stirring him, and it's beyond brilliant.

But…enough.

"Right, then."

Charlemagne Holmes is the 'Baby'. And he's not above a little manipulation if it comes to getting his way in matters. Sherly and My have always been such a unit, those few years they have on Q making all the difference; they're pretty much immune and they leave him be well enough excepting the occasional carping. And although Mummy has said time and again his elder brothers adore him, and that it is perfectly acceptable to feel a little lagging, a little odd-man-out, in a whole Venn Diagram of Increasingly Unusually Odd, Q has felt it, the lonely.

He's the youngest, okay, yes, and he's a Bright Young Thing, by definition; MI6 and his personal recruiter had certainly seemed to think so. Tea is lovely, his flat is lovely, his brain is lovely, he has caused no (all right, very few!) security breaches and My has been pleased with him, overall. Sherly loves him, Q knows, when he remembers Q's existence at all (he sometimes deletes it), and the taggers-along, those so-important Significant Others of his elder siblings, the DI and the foreshortened ex-Army, they are…well, they are similarly kind to Q, when they recall who it is they are being kind to. And why. And Q, in general. Christmas dinners, yes, those. So awkward. Abominable.

And Mummy, being what she is, and what position she holds (until recently), she seldom recalls to remind them. Nor feels she needs to. Q's certainly proved himself a Holmes and then some. And Papa just plays with his bees, chuckling all the while. Darling Papa, best of the lot, really, by far. He's the one said Q was a late-come blessing, and read him Dickens and Doyle, Farmer and Myers Myers. And Alice. Papa really is the very best of the lot.

Q's never been bothered by it, really.

He's the new breed, the surprise child, the one his parents didn't ever expect and got blessed with, anyway. They adore him, he adores them, but it's not the same…not ever the same. They've each other, his parents, as his siblings have their own people, now. And he's been so blissfully, blessedly all right with that, all these years. Q's been just brilliant, playing Solitaire.

But, this one? This one man: James Bond, Agent 007? Twenty years Q's elder and remarking dryly upon his complexion first meeting, and then somehow hooking Q in? So much so Q wagers his own spotless career, and his brilliant future, and all for?

All for what, exactly? Only James knows the answer.

Only James.

When that dick, that ripe cock, when it enters Q the first time, he thinks he might be able to discern it, this truth he seeks, the answer to life's immutable questions. His, at least.

When it seats full deep within him, nudging organs, brushing prostate gland just right, and James rolls his hips at an upwards angle off the tiled bench seat, Q's fairly sure he may've found it—his grand '42'. But appearances are vastly deceptive; so are secret agent men.

"James." Q says this as sternly as he can, which is not so much. "James!"

Uh-oh. The question Q had brought with him is not, sadly, dying on the vine; it's not greying out, not a bit. It nags away at him even as he's being pumped into a state of near-bliss. Bliss, bliss, bliss. Does he not own another word for it, in all his grand vocabulary? NO. All right, fine, okay—'bliss', it is. Yes, that was what this is. Bliss-onna-stick and Q's skewered, right between an emotional rock and a romantical hard place.

"If you—could you see your way—I would like it very much if." Q's so breathless, he can barely manage the requisite syllables. Frustrated, he gives up in it as a bad job, and jabs at James's broad wet chest instead, batting at scarred rock-hard flesh furiously. "You. Do you?"

"Nnnh?"

Q snorts, intensely nervous and suddenly. He absolutely despises not being able to speak properly, this is all just very Neanderthal of him, but he's not exactly protesting why that's so, either. But it doesn't sit well, and a Holmes does not, on principle, accept non-answers to their questions. Even when grunted and yelped.

"James, do you?"

"Shhh, pet," James croons in Q's ear, and nuzzles his roughened chin against Q's soaked scalp, just as he's also ramming that thick joint of luscious meat well up into Q's arse, gaining leverage, increasing momentum. "I wouldn't, if I didn't want it. No fear. No fear. Relax, now. I've got you."

James does indeed, and he has had, there's no denying, and Q's heart takes a flurried tumble behind his heaving ribcage. That's utterly brilliant, he's terribly pleased, yes, but—but! That. Wasn't. The. Question.

"All mine for the taking, aren't you?" James mutters deep-voiced, petting him, fucking him, and generally sending Q's brain cells into numerous disparate directions. "Good boy, Q—beautiful boy. Mmmm…"

"Oh, god."

"No. Just James."

It's when their lips meet, when their mouths are joined sweetly above the lusty connection below, that Q accepts his fate, finally.

If there is indeed only one true answer to that fucking horridly nude and begging question Q simply cannot spur himself on to ask of James aloud, he realizes abruptly he may never have the chance to hear it, not again in this lifetime. It might be lost to fire burning up through his loins, to the steam and the pressure consuming him from within, to the encouraging mutter of James's grunts and growls in his buzzy, fuzzy ears and the overwhelming desire to just say utter 'Sod it—only just fuck me, 007', and become a cog part of the common masses without so much as a quibble.

And? Pitifully enough, Q may end up not fucking caring, either. Not caring—and that is emphatically not what a Holmes does. Q has his pride, but this isn't about that—it never was, either.

Damn James, Q thinks, and goes with it, all of it. Sometimes age and guile will indeed win out over youth, (relative) innocence and a (trendy) bad haircut.

Q can only hope he's winsome enough in the morning.


	3. Chapter 3

"Go home," James orders Q in the morning. "Now, Q." Firmly, and with a little chiding frown. "Get your arse out of here."

"Hmph."

Q scowls ferociously at the pillow stuffed up his nose and rolls over onto his back, grumbling. His bollixed up circadian clock and the glare assaulting his eyes through the terribly chi-chi window treatments of the suite tell him it's gone very late in the morning, or possibly is already after noon. And here he'd been happily dozing till his lovely new lover stuck a hand through Q's inky curls and tugged on them. Roughly but not too rough—which brings back to Q's sluggish mind some brilliant memories of the night before but does very little for his overall sanguinity.

He peers sideways through the thicket of his dark eyelashes warily, only to be met a gaze of fierce blue.

"Q."

The lips that had dithered down his spine earlier whilst James pounded that 'licensed to shag' cock into him were set with stubborn determination. James exuded stern purpose. Which is both absurdly attractive and also terribly irritating of him.

"Q." The hand in his hair pats down Q's fringe before going away again. Suddenly the conditioned atmosphere of the suite feels all that much cooler.

"Ugh," Q groans, flinging out a hand and fumbling for his specs, eyelids squinched up in a combination of temper and the cringing avoidance of all the nasty daylight filling the bedroom. "Whatimesit?"

"Late."

Breakfast in bed ('Just tea', he'd protested, and James only chuckled at him, and confronted him with a full English spread, Sidney-style, on a huge tray, delivered by room service), and another lengthy shower to add/minus the various sorts of pleasant stickiness had already occurred much earlier. They'd not said much to each other, not in actual English words, spoken aloud, but the exchange of happy sex noises and the sounds of fleshy bits encountering other fleshy bits had been a cut above fantastic. Q had drifted into the land of La-La feeling quite beneficently pleased with the world, satisfied he and James had reached a wonderful new 'understanding'.

'Understanding'? Hah! Clearly they've not, not if Q's suddenly being handed the bum's rush.

"S'not. Tch!" Well, he says this, but Q does realize it is, rather.

"Late enough, Quartermaster." James sounds as though he's still faffing in the territory of fond teasing, but there's a definite hint of steel in his voice. He won't stay there for very much longer. "Past time for you to go."

But Q, though bleary with more shagging than he's had in the last five years and far less REM than even he's accustomed to, is not about to let this insult pass, not a bit of it, this being shooed off like some pesky clinger-on. He's a stickler, Mummy says, a born stickler. And he won't be run off without learning at least something as to the whys and wherefores of it. The two f them have just fornicated like mad rabbits, high on LSD-laced alfalfa, but they have also made love, and actually had said some scraps-and-pieces of words aloud that were very much loving, and have thus essentially let their mutual guards down to the point of utterly brutal honesty about—ugh!—those dreadful things called 'feelings'. And if it was all an act on James's part, Q will eat the hat he is not wearing, ta, with a side order of chips dipped in vinegar.

Accordingly, he presses his person into the bedclothes and mattress as much as possible and curls his long fingers into the duvet, expressing wordlessly and well that he has no intention of leaving the bed—not before he's good and ready. And that'll be a cold day in Hell, at this rate.

"Far too late for little boys to be still abed, Q." James seems all but oblivious to Q's body language. "Now, get your things and start moving. You need to be off. You'll miss your flight."

Q grits his teeth, recalling the moment when they were just newly returned to the bed, when the feast was delivered and spread for consumption and he'd had a brilliant cuppa in hand and a man's mouth nibbling on his collarbone. He'd been feeling lazy, blissed out, loose and very flexible. Not at all concerned with his newly achieved status as another of 007's conquests. He is not at anything approaching that happy state now, despite the additional acts of sexual congress James and he had indulged in after his sumptuous breakfast. He's gone all tense, anticipating.

"Come on, pet." James gropes at Q's hip, squeezing it firmly, likely to encourage him. "Up you get."

"Ngh." Q blinks at the ceiling though his cockeyed lenses, and observes the hotel planner has done a lovely job with his crown mouldings. He frowns at it; all very well and good and he appreciates a job well done as much as the next chap.

Except not about that.

"No."

"Q, go home. Right now. You're not built for field work. I am." His James looks admirably noble lunging back with his arms crossed above his head like that; Q is re-smitten. He also looks horrible smug; Q is miffed. "And duty calls."

"No!" Q grits his teeth, quite hard, the very last bitter edge of his coitus-induced laziness fleeing. "Look, I'm not through here—"

"Q, love," James breathes, nestling against Q all the sudden, an unfair assault on the senses and the intellect both, his jaw pressing into Q's messy hair, his mouth parted over Q's throat, just so. Unfair and sublimely mental-making of James; Q trembles, diverted. "You are, really. Go—now."

Q pouts for an instant; reflects he is actually the taller of the two. James is more compact. But Q is starting to appreciate the rewards of having a shorter lover. So must've his stupid snarky brothers before him, damn their all-knowing eyes and amused attitudes.

"Q." Like a terrier with a bone, James doesn't shut it, doesn't cease. "Go back to HQ and let me be about my work. I'll be with you again before you know it, I promise."

"You?" Q has to scoff. "You promise? James Bond? Is promising me?" Really, Q's eyebrows can't go any higher than they are. He shoves his specs up his nose to get a better look at this phenomenon before him. "To—to be with me?"

"I promise. I swear. On my honour."

"Hah! In my eye! The fuck, James!"

Q stops. Stops everything, even the annoying breathing bit, and simply stares. Looks at James, laying in bed beside him like a great big bad lion, lounging about next to the carcasse of his latest antelope.

Q has bloody eyes on him; excellent ones, too, despite the correction. He can see if someone's lying, or yanking at his chain, or just putting him off. It happens so casually, doesn't it? All the time, in Q's experience, and then too James has had so many lovers in his life, ever so many he's probably called 'love' in just that same faux affectionate tone, in just that teasing, maddening manner. Oh, so many blasted lovers and Q's not even certain he even counts as one of those sort. There's something so terribly demeaning about being rushed out of bed, about being pushed out the door, and sent off far away to be probably forgotten. No, definitely forgotten, at least tills it's time for James to call upon Q's expertise again.

He is Quartermaster, and that's the bottom line, isn't it?

James lips are twisting up at the corners, just slightly, and his brows lowering down. "Now, Q—"

"Fine, then," Q cuts in, and 'bitter' isn't even the proper word for it, the acid in his gut. But anything to stop the strop that's coming his way, from a whomping great arse bent on a mission, bull-headed cunt he is. Of all people, Q is perfectly aware of what 007 can and will do, and without the slightest compunction. "Bloody lie to me if you want, fucking fib all you like, James, but don't for a moment think I believe you."

He'd told himself he'd be immune, if he should be discarded after. That exactly that prospect was the most statistically likely. That any resulting pain he felt would be very fleeting and it was better to know than not. But it doesn't stop it from hurting, does it? Being shoved off back home, and so awfully gently. As if Q were all entirely that spotty pup James had taken him for in the first place—but he's not.

Q is so very much not that pup.

"There is no room for honour, James, not amongst operatives." Thus, Q's sharp to reply, snappish. The frames of his specs dig into the arch of his nose where he presses them down with taut fingers. It's a small pain but nothing what's blooming through his chest and filling up the spare corners of his consciousness. Which he puts aside; he's a professional, right? "Expediency is key."

"Q."

"I'm glad you're remembering that, 007."

He'd wanted to be counted.

"It's about time, really, you came to your senses, aged and blunted s they are. Liabilities and all that. I am one, aren't I?"

It's why Q had come: to be counted. Perhaps not be memorable in any real way, because there's this whole track record of Agent 007's to contend with, and Q's not a fool, not a fool at all. Naïveté was a very long time ago; it ceased but a few years after the last reading of Alice, really—or maybe back in uni. Perhaps he's just another in a long line of others, and James won't be the one to finally take home to Mummy's Christmas dinner, and the earbuds will just stay stubbornly in forever more and the trees of his brother's off-and-on teasing will fall unheard upon his blind ears. He's meant to remain alone, then, and Q rather sadly supposes that's no different from before. Sometimes he really hates his brothers, what with their partners and their funny old un-lonely lives, shared over with the most unlikely of characters. And sometimes he really hates Mummy and Papa, what with their having succeeded in balancing it all and fucking gracefully.

"There's a job of work to do, left."

"Oh, really. You don't say, Q" James sets his lips in a thin line and tightens his shoulders. The ripple across them is almost—but not quite—enough to divert Q from his snit. He gulps hard and belts up, his fingers curling down upon themselves. Touching James now will serve no earthly purpose.

"Let's get at it, 007. Right, then, first off?"

Q huffs and heaves himself up against the bank of pillows, straightening his spine and staring eyes-front at the large mirror set opposite the bed. He sees a frowsy-haired young man with nostrils flared and fire burning bright in his eyes, and assorted fingerprint-sized bruises and the imprints of tooth marks on his throat, and a tell-tale flush from the rage consuming him, tinting all his long white nudity with a species of pretty pink.

But it's not a snit, but a bloody statement; Q is different again from his brothers, from his parents—from everyone else in the world. He is unique, even when plopped in the midst of a whole sea of fucking insularity and brilliant oddness. And that's all possible; everything's fucking possible for a Holmes lad. Q lives his life amidst what's possible, what's barely imaginable, what's cutting edge doable and what's not, really, and then makes it all so despite that—'Basingstoke', isn't it. Is it not? Mummy has said it, innumerable times; terribly fond of Gilbert and Sullivan is Mummy. 'Make it so, Q', this new M says to him, this military bloke with kind eyes and a directing hand of smithied steel, and Q does, and sometimes also the highly improbable, too, and the questionably legal, and all that before his morning cuppa.

Like bloody aeroplanes, Q does not take his own self lightly. He is a force to be reckoned with, and that is a fact.

"Seems old dogs don't forget all their tricks, do they? Or battleships their maneuvers, no matter how outdated. I just need to say it's not necessary, James. To lie to me. You're perfectly correct; it's late and I'm going. I'll only be in the way here."

"Q!"

Except not this, and even after his best shot. Oh god, but this—this is damned hurtful, is what, but Q's made of such stern stuff, fuck it all. He bites back invective, and futile name-calling, and all that rot, as none of it makes a fuckload of difference, not in the end. There's only one end, isn't there? And he's barely a blip on the radar, on the road James Bond insists on taking. He's been useful and cooperative and supportive, all requirements for a valuable agent in the field. Any analyst could accomplish the same.

"No, shut it! Now listen to me, 007, before I'm cast out your door. I have something to tell you—"

Two hands set themselves grimly on Q's shoulders and he's rudely wrestled down to his back, a heavy warm weight clambering over him. Q can't help but notice James has a knee placed so as to immobilize him and that the fingers clamping at his bony joints are quite terribly near his windpipe. His eyes widen and his lips fall open—this is an outrage. Another, in a series of them.

"No, fuck that. And sod you, you posh little cretin. You've got it all wrong. Expediency, Q, isn't everything."

"Oh, no? I beg to differ."

He cannot breathe, whether it is that he has chosen to stop his own respiration, the better to hear James's words, or no. Blue eyes bore into his, and are just slightly terrifying. Q gulps and scrambles for his centre, at least mentally. Physically it's clear he's not going anywhere, not at least till 007 lets him.

"Results, though." Which doesn't prevent him from taking up his mental rapier and swinging it, valiantly. "Those are expected, 007. What counts, really."

Q cannot breathe. Only time will tell, and the times before now (he's calculated them) tell Q he's not got much to go on, not here. Not with this man. Not with this bloody not-his James Bond. He's being sent away. He's not important—he never was.

He…never was.

"I am now nearly too late to make my scheduled flight," Q announces abruptly. "And you're quite correct. I'm very much in the way here. Not my milieu. Let me up."

Bond is correct, youth is no guarantee of innovation, but that's hardly what Q was seeking from this encounter, is it? And it's a dead loss, clearly. Oh god, so clearly. 007 eats up 'youth' by the bucket-load and spits it all out for brekkers. Q's idiot naïf self had offered no intrigue whatsoever; he's been trumped already by people named 'Pussy' and there's nothing to do but cut losses. And run, run, run for his life—and his sanity. Just as 007 wants him to do. Fine, then—he's going, all right? He's going, and good riddance.

There spaketh poor Moneypenny, by her subsequent post-Bond actions alone, and it's galling, truly galling, to be relegated to being just like her.

Q grits his teeth, so hard the grind is audible, and bites it out, what he's officially boarded an aeroplane for. Yes, he'd come to stave of James's tedium, he'd come to offer himself up like so much raw filet to a prowling lion, and he'd come to try his luck out on the brass ring shaped hole that was James's finer emotions. But he'd also come because M had sent him. With strict instructions to return unscathed, natch.

"But I have yet to impart something to you. Business related, 007. Naturally. Per M."

"Oh." 007 has not shifted an inch to let Q up and out but his gaze narrows to twin beams of piercing bright. "Really?"


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> OOC? Oh, who cares, right? Fluff and sex, then. Roll on; this is the way I roll.

"Yes, of course. Don't be dull, 007."

Q has a return flight scheduled at three; it's already half one. James has a contact meeting set up for quarter past two. Q should hand over the newest devices in MI6's arsenal and just be done with it. As Moneypenny was. At the end. Fond and forgiving, and still vaguely in love-and-awe, after. Perhaps she had believed Q wasn't fully aware of what transpired between them, but he was. That straight razor haunted his dreams, still. He'd played the video feed a few too many times over to be considered quite sane.

"As it happens, that's why I am actually here. In Sydney." Q sniffs disdainfully, jerking up his chin. "All along, and never doubt it. Officially, 007." Though to be fair, poor Sydney had never done a thing to offend Q's sensibilities e're now but it seemed it was newly destined to be recalled always as the sorry site of his personal failure.

To be brutal, Q had suffered a bit more failure than he cared to swallow, lately.

Q was terribly aware, and it had nearly foundered him, of that horrid surge of improbable jealousy, the one he'd felt when first watching Moneypenny and 007 together. It had been the final clue, that one single damning event, in a long trail of them. And, to add even more fuel to the fire, that time when Silva had handled James in that nasty manner, running his hands all over him, touching him to seduce? And when he'd snaked his way through every one of Q's carefully engineered defenses and humiliated him right under James's very nose? Even 'clever boys' can be left with egg on their faces and bruised egos and—oh, fuck yes—burning breadcrumbs, all the way along; that was the way of it. And Q did not enter a flying device lightly, not even remotely. Even M wasn't enough to induce his cooperation—but James was. Cancel that: the real possibility of James was.

Was. Had been. No longer.

Losses—cut them. Connections—disable a.s.a.p.

"This?" Q flaps a long, lean hand, indicating the disturbed bedding and all the attendant nakedness. "Was just a little extra service. Since you were bored to tears, or about to be, and not a one of us back at HQ wants to see you off hunting down yet more trouble, Bond. A precautionary diversion, nothing more, and fully initiated on my part, keeping you with the programme. Fortunate I'm sufficiently queer, isn't it? Convenient."

"Oh, really?" James remarks again as he hovers over Q, weight supported on his forearms, his face admirably blank and calm. "I rather thought as much, Q. You're all about efficacious application of resources, aren't you." He states this flatly, as if it's a fault and not a trait key to Q's job, Q's very method. "Hmm." Q is treated to a long cool blink, thoroughly assessing, through sandy lashes. "Still, on the whole it's disappointing of you, Quartermaster. I had thought this meant more to you."

Q is miffed further by the comment; more than that, he's still horrendously jealous of Moneypenny, and of all of the ones before him, all the ones who seemed to have counted where he has not. With all due respect to M's directives, he'd quite like to murder James for it, the outrages visited upon his most tender feelings—and his pride. Sometimes.

"Of course I am efficient," he shoots back, warily. He doesn't quite understand why James should be 'disappointed' or looking for more. It made far more sense for him to be relieved. "I don't care to waste anything much less valuable time, 007. You know that. Or…or a single one of the resources you mention. And why would I ever come looking for this mythical 'more'? You mistake me; I think you always have."

"Little liar." James laughs, just softly, and drops a sucking filthy kiss square in the middle of Q's chest. "Q, I think we both realize what's just happened here."

A hand is insinuated beneath his spine, the fingers spreading wide and warm as James drops down to one propping elbow and lands a whole trail of tiny kisses right up Q's quivering skin, only to stop at the swallowing hollow at the base of Q's throat.

"No." That hand is gentle on his spine, the palm of his rubbing up and down, oh, slowly. Q shudders. That old adage suits his state perfectly: 'once, twice, but three times? No!' He will not be fooled again.

"No. I know precisely what happened here, 007. Shagging happened; very nice it was, too. But now it's over."

"Not over."

"Yes—er, no, 007!" But that's not how Q operates. That's not what James needs, as per Q's observations. He needs real, this old dog of a spy. Something to get his back teeth into. Oh sod it all, yes, it's a bloody revelation. James-the-man-and-not-the-agent requires real like he requires oxygen but he's never going to believe he can get that from a mere kid. And he patently believes that Q is little more than that, a jumped up child faffing about in a man's world—the merest infant. "No. Trust me, it's over. It never even began."

"Baby. Tch!"

"Don't call me that; I hardly am." Q flinches. "It was only just the sex, Bond. Don't read more into it."

And Q is gagging for 'honest' as well; he emphatically needs not to be addressed as 'Baby' by a git double his age and he craves…he needs unicorns and Hogwarts, and the Once and Future, and Alice, too, but he's not going to get any of that, not from this man here, and really? No one is.

He shouldn't have presumed, not on the basis of some not-so-furtive interest back at the offices and certainly not on the events of the previous night and morning. This was all simply SOP for 007, his normal modus operandi. Most importantly, and even more crucial than pride or his dignity is that the James he sees through his stupidly adoring rose-hued specs needs a reason to come back home to, if MI6 counts as 'home', and Q knows James has very few of those, the reasons. If they even exist yet they've been shoved well down into the man's deepest darkest levels of consciousness—and now he'd gone and disturbed them, those murky layers, and thrust his oar in where it didn't belong.

And it had been maybe a bit presumptive, but Q's not a bad catch, not bad a'tall. And he'd rather thought…he'd rather hoped. But that was a hope dead in the water. Time to face up to it, then: been there, done that, owned the—

"Oh, no, no, no, Q." White teeth flash in his face, there and gone again. "Who is the bald-faced fibber now?" Bastarding Bond even has the innate gall press down and to nip sharply at Q's chin, chivvying him. "Pot, kettle, pet. And don't fool yourself I'm letting you off the hook this easily but duty really does call. What did you bring me, then?"

Bastarding James Bond has slid that soothing palm at Q's back down the curve of his bum and has thrust a thumb into Q's bottom.

He jolts, electrified and appalled at what even the slow circle of fleshy pad of skin does to his equilibrium. Then clamps down instantly, belting the fuck up, and not being a 'baby', cheers ever so much.

"I—I…" Oh, fuck. "…Fine."

Q's attempts to set what happened aside gracefully were clearly insufficient. Galling as it was, the lines of James's face were dialed up to 'affectionate but absolutely not listening,' but his gaze was the dead cold of an agent's roving stare and was affixed narrowly on all of Q's darting glances and small blushes. No matter what his thumb's doing, which should just be called 'lethal' and be done with it.

"Fine!" Q flinches again and lifts up his abused chin, abruptly contrary. He had tried, really he had, and blast the perceptive old arse and his supersensitive spy goggles for seeing straight through Q's shabby measures. "Right, then. To business."

Absolutely galling, this whole matter. As Q, not unlike his brothers, can be all that is 'real' when called upon, when moved to. As real as the next bloke or bint turning up in 007's bed, and probably whole degrees improved over that abysmally low bar. He's a Holmes, so he's bound to be better at it.

"…Finally." The dry-as-dust of James's response could strip the sand off the Sahara; Q flinches. "Let's begin. Talk to me, Q. What do you have for me?"

"Right, yes," Q repeats sharply, reining in and eying his bedmate for the briefest of instants to ensure James is paying his professional position due attention. He is Q, and Q is what he is, in the end. Then he looks away immediately, because he must if he's to continue talking a'tall. It's too hard to not; they both know what 007's 'business' will lead to. "You've a newly issued handgun, same sort as last time. You've the radio, a replacement, and much improved."

This is information that Q patently advises the eminently bland bedside table, manfully resisting the urge to press his arse against that broad warm hand still insistently caressing it, even as 'James' is gone away and only '007' remains. Why will it not stop moving, that thumb violating Q, messing up his trajectory? When will daring Mr Bond give up on the old seduction maneuver?

"Go on."

"The full work up, this time. Wide-ranging satellite coverage, global. So you can run off to the Antarctic next, if you like or the spirit moves you, and we'll always find you."

The answer to that speciousness is likely 'never'. Q swallows down stupid saliva collected in his mouth and rushes on—this is only nerves; he knows it. It will pass.

"You have also been supplied a lovely new car for your use. A Jaguar coupe model, suitably equipped; just glance over the manual—or simply push buttons and pull levers as you always do. I'm certain you'll sort it; you'll die if you don't and I can't see that happening. Right—yes! That's situated down the hotel garage, slot B-221. And…and."

The old seduction maneuver? It's old hat, it's antiquated, and yet it is still very effective, god help him. Q holds his breath again; his chest is very tight as the horribly caressing hand sweeps upward and then downward once more, prodding gently. He's fucking being petted, isn't he? And this may be it, the last instance 007 touches Q, or it may herald the first of many; he doesn't know, and cannot even begin to guess the odds. Oh, but it hurts and in myriad ways that feel so good. Q can't bear it cease, but it must—it must.

"…And? Quartermaster? What else, then?"

Q narrows his eyes, mean and lean and maybe even a tad bit snarky. He's sodded off. He really hates this bit, having it dragged out of him. But duty calls.

"You've one of those bloody fountain pens, the ones you like so much, the exploding ones. I made it myself. Murdered a perfectly lovely Caran D'Ashe to do it, too; wish you joy of the thing. I can't see the use, but whatever—your funeral, 007. It's in a special carry case, on the entry table. Right next to your departmentally approved weapon, the passkey for the car and the radio."

"Mm." James stares at him, long and with a dark blue consideration, his chin lowered. "…Q."

It's as the sea, the blue, the lovely sea he'd glimpsed during the nightmare flight to Sydney; Q could drown in that regard; that is, if he doesn't resist and simply keep on swimming.

"What, now?" he snipes, glaring.

"You know? I've changed my mind, Q. Full stop, I'm afraid. You may stay, but you have to take yourself off to the safe house or the embassy if you do, and keep under lockdown. I'm not leaving you here on your own."

"No—I can't. You can't. It's late." Q swallows, and starts the horrible process of withdrawing. He'd had his fun, and now it's over. "Far too late, 007. Excuse me. Pardon." Time is growing so short; his time with James is already passed. It was over at the word 'go'. And he's not about to hunker down and hide away. HQ has the better systems. "I must leave. Good luck, then, Bond. And take your bloody thumb out of me—that's highly unnecessary."

"Hm." James ignores him and only presses deeper, till Q sees nothing but red-and-black behind his squinched shut eyelids. "Q?"

And why in heaven's name is there a hand in his hair, at his nape, the fingers tapping down in a rhythm? Does 007 require his Quartermaster completely spineless and daft, like a mooncalf?

"My dear Q."

"Y-Yeth?" Q pauses in the midst of an involuntary arch of spine, a twitch of long legs, because he really would like to be persuaded, actually. "Um." He clears his throat. "Ah. Yes?"

"Let's…have dinner."

"Wh-what?"

"Dinner. Two weeks from now, so end month, or beginning next. December 1st, that's it."

Q might have been attempting strategic retreat but two very nicely muscled arms moving like lightning restrain him neatly. He doesn't struggle.

"D-dinner?"

His privates are private again; Q can maybe re-attempt cogitation. Sort of.

"Hmm," James nods, decisively, as if agreeing with himself this mad idea is the very best one. "Yes. A nice outing. A proper date, since I owe you that, I think." The voice in his ear is reflective, almost considering. "For services rendered me and not in the line of duty. You're a very pretty boy, little one, and—"

Q doesn't even bother to protest the 'little'. This is a knife-sharp turnaround in the path he's seen laid out before him. Even he needs some processing time.

"And. And?"

"I find you—ah?" Q has no idea if James is joking with him or not. He can only stare, gawping. "Ah, a'hem. Loveable. That's the word I'm seeking."

James leans in and pecks at Q's nose, the tip of it, minty breath and all.

"More, cannot seem to be quite able stop myself, thinking that, all odd hours. Odd…but it is what it is." He shrugs, and Q boggles at Bond doing the 'que sera, que sera' over his own gangly long difficult self.

"Ng..geh?"

So much for articulate; that's another lost hope.

"Hmm…yes, perfect. Dinner, then. Put it on your calendar, Q. Or your whatever it is you use to track you. Smartphone?"

Q jerks his head about to stare up at this cogitative stranger's face, so fast he nearly breaks his own neck doing it. "Sma...ah?"

But it really is James Bond who is smiling at him, fondly, and no other, but then again not in any way demeaning or dismissive, and Q's wavering heart is sunk again, just that soon.

"You. You can't mean that."

"More than I should do, perhaps," James replies simply enough, and the killer charming Bond-patented smile gains a quick teasing wink to go with it. "Politically, it's a bit of a suicide run, this. Frowned upon, is close fraternization. M will have his kittens. Moneypenny will—ah, well, enough speculation. I don't even want to consider the PM's read on it. But, as to that, though, not certain I've a damn left to give, but, hey?"

"Hey?" Q echoes faintly, blinking fast. "Hey?" This is not the James Bond he'd been expecting, the one he'd pegged to gracefully reject him. His jaw drops open; he's a bit mashed flat. "…Hey…"

James says 'hey'? James thinks of kittens? James uses words such as 'loveable'? In regards him? Heavens, but Q learns something new about this intriguing old goat every day, doesn't he? Kittens!

"Yes. M—my M?"

A hard hand captures Q's pointy chin and forces it up so their eyes meet. The fingers smell of Q's well-loved arse, of come, of shower gel and of James's sweat, and it's more than comforting, somehow. It helps Q focus, when everything else has gone conkers and all swimmy with fucking weird.

"Er. Yes, James?"

"The previous M." James blinks at Q, once, quite significantly, and is dead cold serious in a flash. "She'd approve. Of you, and of me, and of us, together. Rather a lot, I think. She'd probably ask me what took me so long. No, she'd definitely ask, and well…I think."

"You…think?" Q can't help but prompt. "Think…think, James? Think?!"

Q realizes he sounds exactly like a parrot, a particularly numbskulled one, reduced to repeating mindlessly whatever next weird words fall out that beautifully firm mouth. Possible shrieking them back verbatim. He realizes vaguely he's been completely caught up again by this glimpse into the inner fastnesses of Agent 007, the best MI6 has, and the one who is known to be the most unknowable. It's a worse situation that he'd thought he was in. Now he's completely unrecoverable.

"You think." He repeats it flatly. The previous M? Oh, god. Oh, god no. Not this—and not this now, please?

"Oh, yes, sorry about that," James teases for an instant before sobering again, just as quickly. "But…Her. Herself."

James is gone uncharacteristically flushed, his usual suave teasing smile gone all a'kilter, faltering. He drags Q back down on the pillows and wraps two strong legs about Q's chilled bare ones, planting a drift of kisses across Q's blanched lips and taut jaw and then upwards, ending only at the petulant scowl Q knows is creasing his forehead. Then back down again, and there's a moist warmth obliterating the bewildered disbelieving frown straight to oblivion. His pelvis presses down and Q has a very difficult time paying attention, but then again he really must—he really must. This is pivotal.

"She'd say to me, I'm certain," James purrs, almost inaudibly, lips dipping down to caress Q's ear. "She'd say 'James, everyone deserves some reasonable measure of happiness. Even double-oh's.' Or maybe she'd just tell me to man up and get with the programme. I never knew, with her."

Q swallows, his throat absolutely arid, and waits the longest single second he's ever had to endure. Only simply waits, because people—even seasoned spies—will oft'times tell a person vastly important things if one just allows them to continue nattering on. And Q is terribly good at listening.

"Love," James says, or rather whispers, right into his ear canal, straight to his brain, and Q's gone a little catatonic, assimilating that word, in this context, from those lips to his own synapses. "That's what M would say." James can't possibly mean it, but then again, he clearly does. James, for all his faults, is still brutally honest, upon occasion. "And, love, you're a treat to look forward to, a bit of Christmas for me. A gift, and one I didn't look for, really. And I need this…this something, this, what we've started. I need you. Don't go; not yet. Stay. Fifteen more minutes, Q."

"Yes?"

"Oh, yes."

"Right." Like there was ever a question? Q sets his jaw and tense his limbs, ready for action—any action. "Shan't go, then."

He still makes sure to roll his eyeballs at James, huffing slightly as if he's very much put upon. Which he is profoundly not, but someone has to lighten up this conversation, or he'll simply melt into the counterpane and cry all over the amazing man he's just ejaculated on. No...with.

"Just yet." James blathers on, convincing Q when there's no need of it. The bird's already well in hand. "There's time. A full fifteen minutes, you say? Much can be managed in a mere fifteen minutes."

"You don't say."

"So it can." James is terribly smug, the bastard. "I know it can. Let me show you?"

He knows he's won, if by winning Q over again he means 'winning' in the purest sense of the word. Well, to be accurate, he's never lost Q, but Q doesn't need to tell him that, either, does he?

Q, a bit giddy, allows himself the pleasure of a peculiarly quirky, somewhat feline grin, and narrows his gaze on the utterly splendid man who has casually just handed over the entirety of the crucial data Q's been seeking. He's got an answer then. Well.. a sort of an answer, a stab at a reply…but good enough to work with, and Q's worked with far less. That doesn't stop him from working it, though; no, not at all.

"If… I'm truly needed here, that is," Q flirts, wriggling. "And that's twelve now—and counting."

"You are," James nods, thumb right up the ring of Q's anus in a heartbeat and poking. "Brilliant—we can make this work. Come here, baby."

"Oh, yes—pleath now—good, Jameth!"

It is brilliant.

"Baby…oh, babe!"

And it does work—by the skin of their teeth, the fact Q is already loose from prior good use, and the grace of James Bond's mad driving skills. Q barely makes his return flight, he quite forgets his soothing metal wrist bands and nearly also his own pants in his insane scramble, but it's been worth it. And the Jag is appalling fast, especially when handled by an expert.

Never mind his bloody pants; Q's a bit glad he's been handled by an expert, too.


	5. Chapter 5

Time.

Happens.

To think.

Back in London, back at work, his passionate idyll over and done with, his arse pleasantly sore still, Q thinks.

Thinks, thinks, thinks and then ponders.

But then James Bond is returned to HQ in just two days, his mission accomplished.

The Jag is mostly intact and so is the gun. He's even managed to retain his tracker, 007. The pen, however, had quite fortunately exploded itself, right along with the latest villain.

Q thinks. He masticates concepts, ideas and theories like a gourmand, poking them, turning them over, examining all sides for texture and flavour and, ah? 'Doneness.' That ineluctable state of being just right.

Just right. James is a very flexible man, all 'round. Quick thinking, adaptable. Not up to the par of a Holmes, naturally but, then again, very few are. Given enough time and the inclination to parse it out, James would likely arrive at the inevitable conclusion anyway.

Well…maybe. Q scowls at his tea, gone cold by his elbow. Possibly not. He resembles Papa, as does Sherly. But really it goes back a generation, or maybe more, as H. sapiens sapiens tend to run.

No…yes…oh, fuck, likely. James would sort it, given just a few more hints and clues and evidence. Q's not chosen to fall headlong for any common garden sort of idiot. Never.

Thing is, Q's an MI6 agent also, even if he disdains the legwork aspect of it and abhors the field (and of course aeroplanes and queues on the Tube and really any sort of extraneous travel, excepting always cabbing). And secret agents, by definition, tend to keep their secrets. And Holmes's, by definition, tend to keep their own secrets very well, indeed. All of them, the whole bloody clan. Mumchance, like bloody mutes, even, and poker-faced enough to win consistently at all manner of card games.

But…Q wants James. He does so want James, and not just as 007, or because Bond, or anything like that. Nonsense, all of it; Q is decidedly not a fangirl. No, he truly wants the man, as in requires, craves and hankers after. In a whole differing way, and a brilliantly perpendicular attitude.

The crux, then? Mummy and Bond. Bond and Mummy (and then there's Papa. And let's not even consider his horribly interfering, terribly overprotective brothers, and their accompanying lot. No, let's not.)

Fine, then, as there's no help for it. Cards on the table. Smoking gun, disassembled. James, possibly (probably?) quite receptive?

The alternative really doesn't bear thinking of. It gives Q the cold creeps and sends him into fœtal, just the idea of it popping into his great brain. He casts it out again, right smart. Despicable idea!

Right then.

Next opportunity, Q will be cornering James and popping the next burning question he has been keeping fast in his mental 'to-do' list, all and only for the benefit of that impossible, improbable man he wishes to retain a proprietary interest in. (Real, real, real and so much real it's painful.) And it will likely be a bit of bang-up, drag-it-out, all 'round bomb in the making, even despite Mummy's best sherry, even despite Papa's consummate skill with the joint-and-the-mash, and every single one of them will just end up bloody choking on emotional shrapnel amongst the tinsel, but then they'll also like manage to muddle through it, when it's done and over. Although likely James will then take to watching over Q like the bloody raptor he would be, if he were a bird. Thank god he's not. And poking back, naturally, and pestering Q for the rest of their natural born days, if Q lets him. Which he shan't, or at least not intend to, but then James is a very determined chap. So…he might. Q's siblings have certainly caved unilaterally to the wishes, wants and inquiries from their better halves, drat and blast them. Spineless gits. This is what age-and-stage does to one, isn't it?

Q doesn't suffer from that malady, but James? James, at half again Q's age, he might.

And James will want to know everything, every damned detail, if only because his job of work, and if Mummy doesn't tell and Papa steps around it, as he so often seems to do with the more 'difficult' of issues, then it will be up to Q to intervene and reveal all. He'll be bloody forced to, by ethics and for James's stupid Scottish tendency to have things all squared up. And as James will be curious, and as it seems new information always seems to spawn new lines of inquiry, sod it all, and most definitely for the fucking perspicacious spy Q's fucking. Very determined, James is. Q should know. No—Q does know. But, despite that?

No, more it's 'besides' that—it's bloody Christmas. Christmas coming, but once a fucking year.

And besides that….Mummy.

Mummy!

 

Q misses several 'next' opportunities to bring up his proposal for James, in that the man should tag along to Christmas dinner at Q's family home, but somehow can't bring himself to mind it that he doesn't. Something about having fingers or tongues or pricks in his mouth and thus removing the practicality of saying much of anything to anyone intelligibly, that's it. And since 'pillow talk' for James is generally not a thing, and the pillows they employ for their sexual shenanigans and exploits are usually neither soft, nor flat, nor private—being the wall of the laboratory lav at HQ or the minuscule back seat of the Jag in a lay-by on the M5, or, rather memorably, him being bent over his own messy desk in his own private office in the terribly wee hours of some workday—Q doesn't get the actual words spoken aloud in James's hearing till just two measly days before the big event horizon comes dawning.

"Wouldn't miss it," is all James says to him, and proceeds to finish finger-fucking Q to nirvana. That would be in the loo at Tesco's.

Q doesn't even have the mental wherewithal left over after to reply politely to James's acceptance of his invite with that universal phrase, most often used to signify his august family's intense pleasure over any random and/or most fortuitous outcome: 'Good.'


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 007 collides with Three Continents. And Sherly.

Come Christmas dinner, James makes his appearance. In Mummy's drawing room, with a tumbler of a very handsome whisky pressed into hand, neat. There's the car they came in, he and James, still standing before the porte-cochère and Q half wishes to flee back to it and pound steel to the floor (or have James do it, as he's the one who appreciates that sort of thing: the pedals, the knobs-and-dials, the shifter, all that rot) and yet also there's more than half of Q who only wants to observe what develops. Possibly from behind the safety of the walls of Papa's built-in subterranean bunker. Well, he calls it a 'priest hole', but…

Really, an acid test, is Christmas.

Or, a really corking, truly brilliant, completely sideways-approaching super special gift for the man Q loves beyond all reason. Could be either/or.

Q winces at his own not-quite-knowing, dragging his heels just a little as they enter the expanse of Mummy's drawing room, but fortunately James doesn't catch it. If he does do, though, he doesn't comment. Small blessing then; it is Christmas.

Perhaps James will mark his hesitance down to Q's reluctance to visit home, or at least for these more formal holiday occasions. He's nowhere near the level of Sherly but Q's not exactly one for forced joviality.

Papa is the one who ushers them in, speaking of jovial, daftly wreathed in kind coming-and-going smiles as per his usual, and plying them with drinks before dinner as he goes. Q feels no small amount of dread, once again, a toothsome dollop of sherry clutched in a slippery white-knuckled fist. He's been feeling pangs of gut-twisting dread since they left London and his stomach is bloody well inchoate with it. The thought of actual food ingested, even a proper supper as prepared by his illustrious Mummy or his deceptively slapdash Papa, is positively sick-making.

"Bugger." He breathes this, walking into the study, James at his elbow. "Bugger, bugger, fuckity-fuck. Look who's here before us. Damn."

No need to say this aloud but then again—yes. His elder brothers are already in attendance along with their assorted whatnot. Q huffs a weary sigh. He'd stupidly hoped he and his delightfully dangerous beau would be the first ones to arrive, but the states of the driveway gravel, the foyer carpeting and the hall-tree have already informed him differently. Bother and flustration; here went nothing, flat nothing.

"What?" James bumps up against him in an elegant slouch, lips glancing fondly by the curve of Q's ear. "Nervous, pet?"

Q sees James has already scanned the exits and entries automatically but has yet to really concentrate upon the other occupants.

"Right, I suppose I'll forced to introduce you." Papa having bustled away again, making some vague humming noises about helping Mummy.

Polite even under pressure, Q huffs and turns to gesture to one of the other guests first. The shortest one, of course, as Q really does like to attack things with certain degree of neatness, however odd his bent might appear to others.

"James Bond, this is—"

"Oh, no need, mate," Dr Watson, the amiable but excellent marksman, replies mildly, extending a hand to meet James's as he strolls forward. "How are you, Bond? Well met, yeah? Been a damnably long time, hasn't it?"

"Hah!"

James is—startlingly— clearly absurdly delighted by this unexpected happenstance; the handshake the two men share morphs into a groping arm grip and then James and the doctor are engaging in that very silly man-hug motion normal blokes seem to do at sport matches. Q gapes. This is not sort of 'James' he's ever seen before, that's for sodding certain.

"Three Continents!" James carries on, all verve and bonhomie, making much of the doctor. "Good to clap eyes on you again, old man. You're well, then? Recovered?"

"Never been better, cheers," Dr Watson replies amiably, and Q, though his eyes have gone wide and dry behind the dubiously shifty safety of his lenses, notes that silly arse Sherly has snapped ramrod straight, has clenched his back teeth together with a pronounced audible grind and has abruptly materialized across the minor distance of carpet and is stationed right at the compromised doctor's side with an amazingly eye-boggling rapidity. Sherly's one bent arm thrusts out deliberately to knock James's manly limb straight off the short doctor's shoulders and he really actually growls at James, the barmy bugger; an eerie rumble, dark and darker, straight from the heaving chest buttoned precariously under his bespoke white dress shirt.

"You, there! Ger'off!"

It's very odd and a distinct alteration to the ambience. Every articulation of Q's next eldest sibling, that normally coolly demeanoured Master Misanthrope, is wound tight as fuck, is gone all snarly and is quite pronounced in cutthroat focus. Really, the misguided idiot looks like nothing other than a bloody tiger eyeing down a rival.

Q tenses and opens his mouth, deciding he should really intervene before there's any actual bloodshed, but it's already in process of being dealt with. In a way, that is.

"Oh, oi, Sherlock!" Watson scowls up, twisting about to glare at his personal Holmes edition. "Nearly caused me a spill, you great git." He twirls the ice in his tumbler irritably, shoving it under Sherly's flaring nostrils. "What are you even about?" he hisses at him, elbowing vengefully, tit-for-tat for Sherly's obnoxious crowding. "Of course I know Bond. Why, we're practically old pals, he and I. We, er…we, ah, served. Together. A'hem."

Sherlock emits a strange whistling sound but is forestalled from protesting.

"You don't say, John," Mycroft—that twat—simply has to slip in, speaking from the shadows. "Did you now?"

"Oh, absolutely," James chimes in urbanely, and he and John Watson share a long and rather horribly meaningful stare around the ireful jut of Sherly's black-suited shoulders. "One of my fondest memories, that. Ah, Afghanistan."

John hums in comfortable agreement and bats his sandy lashes, cocking his chin at James like some pint-sized coquette.

"John," Sherly barks, snatching at his companion's wrist, and Q only barely manages to stuff back the rather mad laughter bubbling up his throat against all reason. As this is all intensely farcical, even for a Holmes family reunion. "John."

It's an insane giggle, highly inappropriate, and it really is all due to Holmes genetics, thanks to Papa. Q spares a grimace for a few of those other rather annoying traits he's inherited even as he subsides to a watchful quietude.

"John, look at me."

"What, Sherlock? What, now?"

"John. Come here, this instant."

"What? Why? No, Sherlock! For chrissake!"

James, bless him, just nods off the two men retreating—the stupidly jealous one doing the dragging and the slightly irked one being dragged, both. And ever so bland James is, his lips just quirking wryly as if this were just some rather unfortunate social by-play at, say, the Brazilian embassy, exactly as had occurred during the mission last month with that silly finance minister's daughter, and not the very first thing that happens to him when he strolls all unawares into his own boyfriend's parent's parlour.

"Do you have absolutely no manners instilled in you, Sherlock? Let me go, damn it!"

Indeed, Q is certain James is terribly well aware of the precarious social dynamic—and what's just been done to it—or more like, what he's gone and done to it, bleeding catalyst he is. James is like a ticking time bomb and Q had already anticipated some degree of excitement out of the evening, but this? This is really too much, and too soon. But then, Sherly in a strop is flat out amusing, providing Q gains sufficient distance from the guaranteed explosions and fireworks; certainly even Mycroft is smiling discreetly from behind the cover of his drinks glass, as is his dinner date, the dapper DI.

"Oh, now—oh, stop it." Poor John is shouting, but quietly. "Mummy's going to have my head for this, do you know that? Sherlock, you utter dickweed."

Sherly is nowhere near as hushed. "No!"

The protesting doctor has been hauled forthwith over to a convenient dimly lit alcove; a series of furious but much less strident whispers ensue.

Q's eyes rest upon them for an instant longer, musing. He's never before witnessed his older brother being quite this violently animated and it is very entertaining, admittedly. Less entertaining, however, is the dawning and undeniable inference that Q's own James and Sherly's little John are known to each other and have been for some time now. Very well indeed, apparently. Extremely well—er, intimately.

Too blasted well!


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The British Government has met Bond before, it seems, and not always in a purely professional capacity.

"James—" Q starts up, only to be rudely interrupted by that very same wanker, who busses Q's quivering nose tip, pressing a subtly cologne-scented cheekbone in and just barely managing to avoid smashing Q's fancy-arse dress specs into the rising arch of his dreadfully Holmesian nose. That's a startling thing to have happen, and so much so Q jumps where he stands and slips into a regrettable speech pattern, the one genetics has ditched him with, by the poor graces of all rat bastards relating back to Papa's august pedigree. "J-Jame'th?"

Sherly, Q is beginning to think, might very well be on to something here, what with his fierce show of territoriality. Q can actually get behind the notion—really, he can. He eyes James with ill intent, all his hackles raised. "James."

"No, settle, love, I'm right here. It's nothing much, the Captain's only an old fri—oh? Oh, but…ah. Mycroft Bloody Holmes, is that truly you in the flesh?"

Q moans, purely out of rising frustration. "Who? What? Who now, Jame'th? Him?"

But lives-to-be-disconcerting James Bond has already spun away on a heel, distracted, and has Q's eldest sibling straight in his sights, though he keeps an open-mouthed and pink-cheeked Q close by with a firmly latching grip on his elbow.

"Oh, no, no! You cannot be serious!" Q spits under his breath, his breath squeezed out him by the sudden steely grasp James has acquired upon him, right 'round his waist area. "You wanker, James." His flies press into the still tenderly aware skin of his groin, trousers fabric drawn taut by the insistence of James's hip; it recalls a marvelous sense-memory but does nothing for Q's peace of mind. "Ignominious old ship my arse!"

"But of course." And there's Bloody Mycroft, oiling his way in as James urges Q forward to meet him. And he's rolling his eyeballs at James, because sodding the obvious here—Holmes's Christmas dinner, isn't it, so of course all Holmes boys on deck and accounted for. "It is I."

"Yes, I do see that, now." James chuckles, though Q isn't certain why this should be a matter requiring laughter. It's only his terror of an eldest sibling, isn't it? Irritating to be sure but hardly special enough to rate noises like that from his James. "Of course it is, right? Funny, that. You never mentioned once you had a brace of little brothers, did you? Keeping them under wraps, I suppose."

At Mycroft's quick little nod and fast smirk, James takes up Q's brother's hand and shakes it firmly, having pressed his empty glass upon a slack-jawed and maybe-furious Q.

"Well, how's tricks, old man?" he inquires pleasantly enough, and perhaps that casual tone is just sufficient to lull Q into thinking he might've been mistaken. "Been a terribly long while since our uni days…and, ah."

Q is grateful that there isn't occurring a repeat of the last sort of wholehearted greeting he'd watched James engage in. However, the significance of the little pause he senses falling between the two men could freeze icebergs. Or melt them to boiling. Q isn't positive which and that really is a thing that he hates. As he has his dire suspicions, clearly, and they are running rampant in his head. Lines of equations generating other lines of equations and 'x' and 'y' spinning on an askew axis and if his James has fucked his brother, Q is dead positive his own mind will run screaming from his body and he'll just be left a pathetic shell.

"The…other."

The other?

"Oh, yes." Q is positive My blushes; dreadful! "That."

Other? More 'other'? Wasn't the last 'other' quite enough?

Q's slashing dark eyebrows climb to meet his tumbled hairline and then disappear entirely, hiding themselves as he undergoes sheer systemic shock. He snorts it off, wrenching himself in a side-stepping motion, seeking escape automatically. But James sticks fast, the bastarding shagging machine who's possibly fucked not only the British Government but also the entire Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers. This sort of shock feels remarkably unpleasant to Q, especially when doubled. And it wasn't even Q who was supposed to be on the receiving end, not this particular evening! It was James, the slippery tosser who loves him.

At least...Q's fairly positive in his conclusions that James has come to entertain a certain degree of finer feelings for him, but there's always the sliver of doubt, isn't there?

Bugger the sherry, Q wants some tea. But first things first; there's an another anomaly on the up-and-up and he's bloody fucking curious enough to be tetchy over it. Who in their right mind would shag Q's eldest brother?...Oh, right then. The pet Yarder would, poor bugger.

"James."

Q doesn't happen to notice he strikes exactly the same querulous note his middle brother had, berating his paramour; no, not at all. He's busy gritting his teeth and attempting to shatter his sherry glass with the pressure of his fingers. James, however, nobly ignores Q's small tells in favour of toadying up to a waiting Mycroft.

"…James?" Q gulps, concerned, but the syllable is really very small suddenly, and quite overwhelmed by Mycroft's studied speech patterns.

"Really. It's a pleasure, Bond, as always." My excels at speaking; really, it's all he ever does, the fat sluggard. "I have—shall we say?—sorely missed the sight of you. If you don't mind me saying?"

Mycroft paces forward staidly, wearing what, for him, passes as a uniquely warm grimace. It's actually quite a charming look to him, warming up the permafrost considerably, and it leaves Q's own blood run quite cold. My is flirting—flirting?

"And a hearty welcome to our little family gathering, Bond, the—ahem!—that 'other' completely aside. I'm sure Mummy will be exceptionally pleased."

Q is all at once of the idea he might've joined Alice down the blasted rabbit hole. Or that his sherry had been spiked by Papa. But no...Papa generally doesn't drug his youngest boy, at least not on principle.

James, keeping a jittery Q close as houses, smiles in return of Mycroft's sly one. It's like watching a chess match: knight threatens rook and all that. No, it's more a very knowing species of smile and it intimates any number of things Q would absolutely murder all his fond aunties to learn the ramifications and history of—or mayhap not, on balance. In any event, he scowls like the blackest blazes at his innocent sherry whilst the two of them exchange what can only be termed as a sentimental eyefuck.

The pricks.

And My? Mycroft chatters on, the great gormless git, because that's what he does. Oh, god, yes he does, and it's utterly infuriating to be forced to hear him, all plummy vowels, but still slightly improved over imagining him and James back at uni, getting up to various indecencies in the stacks.

"You've been keeping well, I see." Q's eldest sibling coughs discreetly, clearing his throat and looking James all up and down. "Despite all those rumours to the contrary."

Q's gut curdles, literally. Will not his own parents at least come into their own parlour and put a stop to this? Because of course Sherly and John won't—they're a bit busy over in their corner, the brainless gits.

"Hmm." My is practically purring, the lines of his svelte-suited body shrieking silent attraction at James. Q chokes over it, the set of My's shoulders and the glint in his cool gaze, and is angry all over again at his own lover when a soothing thumb presses into the small of his spine and rubs. "Very, very well, Bond. Nice to see that confirmed. With…with my own eyes."

The transformative grin he receives from James is horribly, terribly reptilian; Q bridles where he stands, gone from deeply suspicious to entirely and quietly manic. Suddenly, Q has a complete understanding of Sherly's ridiculous display of a moment prior, regards his own man. And he'd like to join in, indulge in the animal, but his chest is a bit measly to make that sort of growly noise Sherly has down pat. Bloody posh fucks, the lot of them, well schooled, ta, but he'd really like to know how it is Sherly landed all the really dramatic genes and he's left with very few to speak of. Not that My is doing poorly in comparison to Sherly, as he's not, the clot.

"Ja—!"

"We were concerned, naturally, but now I see there was no need, not a one. And no need to inquire how you're going on these days, is there?" Mycroft carries on, regardless Q's deteriorating state of mind. Regardless also of the lurking form of his own date, who has quietly been edging closer all this while. "I see Baby here has got his hooks quite firmly in you. Did you know?"

Q zeros in on his lover's eyes as they crinkle charmingly at the corners; it's lovely to see. That look turned upon someone else, though? Hateful.

"Or did you not notice?"

"Oh, really, Mycroft." Q has to burst out, as this is just bleeding tragic, all of it. "Must you?"

"Of course you did." My has always and ever loved being correct; he smirks. Or smirks more; it's hard to judge the real degree of his self-satisfaction when a person is seeing what amounts to a rising red tide of rage and humiliation, both. "Can't miss it. Baby here never beats about the proverbial bush when he wants something—or someone. I see he's quite got you wrapped round his pinkie finger."

"Oh, that he does, little devil," James affirms gladly enough, inclining his leonine head and patting at Q's heaving ribcage in a horribly courtly manner. "Stands to reason, doesn't it? Always was a bit too fond of you, wasn't I? Back in the day, yes? Such as thing as running true to type, Myc. Can hardly blame me for it."

"Yes," Mycroft nods, gone all cat-in-the-cream, as if the opaque subject is as clear as daylight. "Yes, there it is, isn't it."

"Exactly so."

Sherlock takes this moment to exclaim inaudibly but angrily over some quiet murmur from his doctor friend, a muted shout which quite probably is also 'the infamous 007'-related, and John makes this hasty shushing noise in reply, squelching his second brother with a quick kiss, but Q is nearly completely attuned to his eldest brother and his James. It's both fascinating and appalling, watching these two razor sharp minds take apart Q's beloved construct of loving-trust and examine it under a lens, from all angles. Or maybe it's more like two sets of shiny shoe tips bashing at an unwary sand mound, disturbing the poor ants completely. Whatever—Q feels a bit violated. No...very.

Mycroft nods acquiescence to James's statement, and Q happens to catch out of the corner of his eye their most un-favourite family detective swivelling his chin and gawping over at the three of them, equally appalled. Sherly's hearing is preternaturally acute and Q finds it difficult to believe he's missed a word of what's on. Just as Q is gawping, actually. No—make that Q has been gawping and seems unable to stop. As this is appalling, all of it. And is there a better word available than merely 'appalling'? As he'd like to employ it, actually.

"James!" Q settles for exclaiming Bond's given name. Woefully lame and not particularly effective, as the only thing he gets out of it is James's broad palm and hard fingers spread hot and tight across his bum cheeks, squeezing down in brief pulses. Brilliant, but hardly to the point.

Really, Q's only real comfort is that James had rogered him righteously but a half hour before departure and had made certain to express any number of deliciously grunted and groaned sentiments against Q's swallowing throat and into the mess of his hair. Which Q is currently striving to recall rather desperately between bouts of fast blinking and rapid inhalations. The shock is passing at last, but only barely. Tea. Tea would be...good. Yes.

"And I can't say it hasn't been a mutual matter," Mycroft folds into the desultory but dangerous conversation very smoothly, crème layered atop the smarmy caramel of his best 'I know what you don't, little brother' voice, the bloody wanker. "A mutually beneficial exchange, really, over the intervening years. And now my own dearest Baby in remuneration for your services to the Crown? Well done, you."

"Thanks. Not exactly the way I'd express it, Mycroft, but still. I'm rather enjoying this, how it's all turned out. And Q, too. He seems quite enthusiastic, actually."

"Time to put up the bunting then, James?" Mycroft does that little quirk of lips, the one Sherly always claims he wants to slap straight off him. "Or perhaps go impetuously forward with the happy announcement over dinner, then? Mummy will be ecstatic, I'm sure. Or...is it too soon for such matters? Baby is young yet. Wet behind the ears, really. But…" Mycroft blinks once, slowly. "You must appreciate we all fret over him. We worry lest harm befall him."

"Mycroft!"

"Constantly."

"Oh, for fucks' sake, My—please just don't." Q's heart races in response. "Don't say another word, I beg you." Surely his brothers can not act in this way just this one time? Is Q not a fully grown man, for chrissake? With a gloriously crucial job of work, his own flat all to himself finally and enough responsibility mantled over his thin shoulders to choke a dead dodo? And is he not also perfectly capable of choosing his own form of poison, ta! "Keep your bloody talons off this subject, dear brother! I'm warning you. None of your bloody beeswax."

Q's burst of belligerence is taken as seriously as ever was, which is to say 'not', which is, ergo, ipso facto, precisely the reason he always defensively dons his earbuds at family dinners and listens to his loudest playlist at full volume, because trees falling in dead silence, right?

"Oh, no." James, as ever, is all charming brevity—until, that is, he's just as bloody brutal. "Wrong, Myc. This once." Well, his flash of teeth at Mycroft's stupidly interfering face and beetling brow is brutal, as is the narrowing of his eyes upon Q's brother's subsequent godawfully expectant expression. It's as good as any punch in the snoot, a real clock-winder, that light-eyed stare James has perfected. "You mistake me if you think for a moment this isn't serious. No need for any sudden disappearances, Myc, old man. All my intentions towards your brother are in perfectly good order."

"Oh. I see."

Q gurgles randomly, having been rendered well nigh speechless with a giant clot of rage, pride, joy and bewilderment. Has he just been proposed to? By James? Before the British Government, no less?

"Of course they are, Bond. Never doubted it."

"Well." James winks. "Don't then. Save yourself the trouble."

It appears the final word has been pronounced upon the subject. Mycroft licks his lips and rocks back on his heels, a palm briefly raised up in grudging acceptance.

"Not at all. Carry on, then. We'll leave you to it, I'm sure."

"Pardon?" Q locates his lost powers of coherent articulation, though he's likely grimacing horribly all the same at both those blasted bland politically correct faces. As they fully deserve, the blighters. "Jame'th—Jame'th, have you just? Was that a? Jame'th!"

"Er, ah?" Lestrade, the DI, is blinking fast and licking his lips as well, his whole silvered head tilted slightly as he pops up behind My's elbow. He, too, is seemingly floored by the revelations unfolding in Mummy's drawing room, but he appears fixated on the one specific one, though. Which was light-years ago, mentally, but Q does understand the poor DI might be experiencing some trouble fully assimilating it. "Er, My? My. Could you…would you just—I really think I just heard you admit—er, did you?"

"I didn't, really, darling, or rather I don't now." Mycroft instantly turns to the handsome man who is pursing his very fine, very firm lips, looking quite as though he's swallowing down a whole barrow of lemons. "Haven't for years, but I should wager that's obvious enough."

"No," the DI states flatly, folding his arms tightly across his chest and glaring. "No, it's really not, My."

By rights, Q concludes, his eldest sibling should have already burnt down to a pillar of fine ash, given the amount of non-verbal firepower Lestrade is throwing his direction. Sadly, he doesn't.

"Ah! Right, then—over here, shall we? Let's step away for a moment; settle up. Oh, and do excuse me, Bond," Mycroft nods benignly. "And Charlie? Baby, dearest, do mind your drink, please. You're dribbling a very decent decanting straight down your one cuff; most unsanitary. And please re-hinge your jaw bone; that's quite unattractive. No one needs see your teeth and gums."

"I! I! You! Errrr! Orrrp!" Whoops! There goes Q's newly rediscovered hold on the Queen's English, right up in smoke. "Fuck the fuck off, My!"

"No, it isn't," whispers James in Q's ringing ear. "Keep that gorgeous mouth open, pet. It's a good look on you. Suits."

"I!" Q does his level best to fry the man at his side with a barrage of whip-sharp mean-eyed glaring. Really, he has had quite enough of this shite. "I bloody well hate you!"

"No, you don't. Not really."

"Right. Excuse us." Mycroft sweeps on, throwing a hand through the air, one that just happens to take a firm grasp of his hapless lover's collar, tugging at it. "Pressing matter of importance just come up, right away. Gregory, come along over here, will you, dearest? We have things to discuss, apparently."

"Hey, now! I want my reputable witnesses, My," the canny DI protests. "And don't think you may do just what you like, when you like! Not having it, Mycroft Holmes."

"Of course not, darling. This way, please."

Mycroft has his quietly squawking Yarder swept away into another corner before Q can summon more actual words to address his brand new quandary. But that doesn't last long.

"All right there, Q?" Trust James to poke a stick into it.

"NO! I am not all right there, far from it. B-Both of them?" Q stammers, lunging forward and gripping James by the one lapel. This is—this is urgent! This is a corker, a cream pie flung in his mind's eye, and completely barking besides, just as Q will be reduced to if James doesn't immediately explain why and when he'd boffed both Q's eldest brother and his middle brother's ex-Army lover. Or perhaps not explain but at least justify. "Jame'th? Both?"

Also, there was the small matter of the annoying man apparently just proposing matrimony to Q, right under the nose of Q's previously Bond-shagged eldest brother. Who is a git but with the mind of a steel trap. Certainly James shan't be getting away with skiving; oh, no!

"Ah." James, being James, doesn't flush at all and meets Q's gaze very readily, unflinching. "Yes, as it happens. Yes, I did do. But that's long ago. I have you now, don't I? Only you. As I believe I mentioned earlier, Q—I'm right here. Haven't budged an inch, pet."

"You do," Q is quick to respond. "Of course you do, but if you think I'll ever allow—"

"Of course not, love. Never crossed my mind. That's all long dead in the water. Never to be resurrected, trust me."

"Really, now?" Q cocks his chin at James, feeling mightily obstreperous, and adjust his specs. "Oh, you say that, but…"

Here Q had believed he was the one with the enormous secret to unveil, and now his James has just gone and not only one-upped him, but two-upped him! It's outrageous, is what, this talk of civil partnerships. But also an excellent diversionary tactic, and Q instantly leaps upon it, being a practical sort.

"Hmm?" The icy blue stare has softened considerably now it's just the two of them, standing there. "What is it, Baby?"

"Stop that at once! It's 'Q'; you know that. And you? You say 'of course', you sly old dog, but how much may I really trust you?"

"Well…" James grins again—he's full of these tonight, oddly enough— and this one's warm as buttered toast and lights all Q's inner pyres instantly. "You can't, actually, or…you can, despite me. Your choice, really."

"I! I—no! You're bloody impossible, James!"

"Yes. So I've been advised." James leans in, a curiously swooping movement and Q fleetingly thinks of birds again, which is utter fanciful nonsense. "Recently. By my own Quartermaster, even. Come here, you little loon."

The further explanation Q is hoping for doesn't occur. He's well snogged before he knows what's happening to him, his half-emptied glass finally clinking downward to lie unnoticed to the carpet, and only manages to clue in—and catch up—in the middle.

"You really—you simply cannot—but it seems—am I run mad, James? Or is that you?"

James only shrugs at him, wrapping his arms more tightly about Q's back and bum. "Which will you do in the end, Q? I wonder."

"No—you—really—they're watching! Not there, Jame'th!"

"No, they're not."

By the start of the second snogging, Q has forgotten all about the explanations he's been panting for and the transgressions he's been totting up, just awaiting revenge. He has, however, recalled the full unromantic nature of the proposal James has made him, and is a bit miffed over it, nice as it is to have been the recipient.

"Oh! Oh, bloody you, you mad wanker!" Q is angry about that, naturally, but much less so as time passes so pleasantly. James is thorough. "Of course it's yes. You dolt, it's been yes for ages. Why do you even waste time ask—ugh!"

"Hmmm…good. Good."

James is very thorough. Apparently he's picked up on the universal indicator of general Holmesian approval.

"Yes! Very…good," Q replies after a bit longer, lips sloppy across that jaw, so smoothly shaven. "In...deed."


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is M again...who is, of course, 'Mummy'. And Q is abruptly reminded of why it is James Bond is considered dangerous.

"Whatever are they up to, darling? My drawing room is hardly meant to be a brothel!"

"Now, pet, boys will be boys, you know. I'm certain they're only just canoodling."

The advent of Mummy and Papa impinges only vaguely upon Q's consciousness, at least at first. He's a bit gloriously entangled in the solid heat of James, and his usually alert mind is more than a little fuzzed out by the rampant wet curl of a darting tongue 'round his own and the insistent fingertips clutching at his bum, rhythmically squeezing.

"Dearest," Mummy observes dryly after a long moment. "Bond has a hand stuck down Baby's trousers. Not _merely_ canoodling, demonstrably."

"M!"

A staggeringly precarious situation, fraught with _faux pas_ , this is. Which commences abruptly when James jolts, spins like buttered lightning in a heel-toe rock, and then literally shoves Q straight behind him, keeping him fast with a pincer-grip on Q's uncomfortably bent arm. As well, there is the broad flat of a tanned hand, 'accidentally on purpose' placed so as to pancake Q's ridiculously tented flies between James's taut spine and the raptorish curl-down of yet more digits, sunk firmly into Q's clenched arsecrack.

"Ew, ouch!" Q whimpers, blinking back the sting of possible bruising later, but James hardly seems to hear. "Mind!"

"M?" James ventures, and Q blinks faster yet and braces automatically against what is likely to develop into a rather enormous fallout sequence, worse even than when the rogue agent Silva bombed HQ. "M," James repeats, and the hair on the back of Q's neck rises high. "It is you."

"Bond," Mummy replies, coolly as anything very, very much chilled, such as an ice lolly in Siberia, and releases Papa's arm to step forward. Wisely, though, she stays back just sufficient distance as to provide James the customary bubble of neutral ground. Q doesn't blame her. James is a dangerous bloke, sometimes. "Welcome to your first Holmes Family Christmas. I see you've got Baby."

James growls, not quite inaudibly, and tightens his hold on Q.

Q yelps, involuntarily, his checks flooding crimson. As James does indeed 'got Baby'! His arse, to be exact, and his dominant arm, too. He grits his teeth, stuffing back further protest. This is humiliating enough without his needlessly setting off further protective actions on James's part.

As it is, Papa is regarding James carefully, his jaw firm, and his ghost-grey eyes are markedly steely.

"Ma'am." But, never let be said James doesn't recover quickly. "Sir."

The mask of an agent is firmly in place before Q can complete his next full flutter of dampened lashes; the inclination of his lover's leonine head in acknowledgement is all that is polite. Worse, though, his tone is as smooth as cream…and as bloody well heavy, fraught with all sorts of layers and intimations Q really doesn't care to consider.

"Mummy!"

Q jumps in fast as he can, crashing forward and shoving the bulk of James aside as best as he is able from behind and held catty-corner, with the burning intention of—literally—rushing into the breach.

"Mummy, you know James? Of course you do; what am I even saying?" Q realizes he's babbling like the village idiot but that seems not to be something he can help at the moment; it's all systems 'go!' to quell disaster. "Well, as you can see, he's my boyfriend, Mummy! That is to say, my partner, Mummy, and I've brought him along for Christmas dinner. Please do be nice to him, Mummy!"

That idiotic request earns Q a hard stare from both his esteemed mater and his paradoxically quiet lover. Q glances away, belatedly getting a lid on it, and becoming aware he and James have suddenly been flanked, what with My on the one side and Sherly on the other, the great overprotective tits they both are. He hisses, resenting the show of support even as he's rather grateful.

"Now, Mummy." My murmurs with intent to unruffle a few maternal hen feathers, though it goes unregarded, sadly.

Thinking on it, though, Q can hardly blame them, his brothers. The situation could suddenly descend in to something quite volatile and that's a gun in James's pocket, Christmas goose and all the trimmings or no, and there's no guarantee Agent 007 is actually glad to see his old superior come back from the ranks of the recently deceased.

"Don't be ridiculous! Of course I shall be _nice_ , Baby," Mummy reproves Q, a quick, hard squint the only signal she may well feel her youngest is perhaps trespassing upon the acceptable dignities of her parlour by chiding her. "I am never _not_ nice to any guest you care to present me, am I? Hah!" Mummy elevates her nose at Q. "The idea!"

"Well, I'm sorry, Mummy, but—" Q flounders, and gapes. "It's...well, it's!" Words fail him suddenly, as he's really not honestly certain as to what it all _is_.

"Oh, Mummy," Sherly sighs. " _Really_? Must we?"

No one seems willing to heed Q's next eldest brother, either, although the good doctor might've snorted...or maybe not.

James's eyes narrow into brilliant blue chips of ice and Mummy returns to fixing upon him with a very meaningful stare of her own. Q shivers in reaction, a bit stunned by the animosity reflected in both sets of azure eyeballs, and is intensely grateful when the hand glued above his jutting wrist bone suddenly transforms itself into a comfortingly warm length slung about Q's waist.

At least that means James won't be able to murder Mummy outright; small favours!

"This is," James carries on, intensely urbane given the circumstances, "rather a turn up, M. Or should I address you as Mrs Holmes now? Tell me, has the Minister been notified you're still ticking over, all right and tight? Has Mallory?"

"Hah-hah-hah!" Papa laughs gaily, finally piping up as he paces forward to take up Mummy's hand. "Oh, but this is precious, just precious," he giggles, firmly tucking Mummy's hand most comfortably over his arm. "Most amusing, Baby," he adds, nodding at his bewildered youngest spawn with a gay grin. "And well played out, really. Masterful! I must say I do appreciate a good chuckle before a holiday supper; it does clear out the digestion beautifully."

"Wait, what? _No_!" Q bursts out, appalled. "Father, you think I did this solely for effect? Do you think I've run mad?"

"Effect, Charlemagne? You, of all my three sons? Not likely!"

Q spares a thought to the fact he's never before been quite so chuffed as to observe his own father burst into that trademark and occasionally startlingly ridiculous giggle of his. Oh—and also? He's never been quite so much the focus of attention either, and it's really most uncomfortable a feeling.

"Oh, no, Baby," Papa huffs, pink cheeked at Q's gawp of growing alarm. "You're the last one of them I'd ever expect to draw attention to himself with pointless drama. I can only imagine you simply couldn't manage to put it off any longer, could you?"

Papa is usually quite the reserved sort, and Q and his brothers most definitely take after him, but now and again Papa exhibits these rather blinding flashes of a hidden hilarity. Mummy has always and ever blamed those spells on the 'bloody Vernet genes, darling!'

Q nods, feeling rather helpless in the face of fatherly wisdom. "Exactly so, my boy," Papa says gently, nodding his understanding. "There comes that time when it's imperative your Mummy be properly introduced to your beau. And it's hardly Christmas when the one you love isn't by your side, is it?"

Q gulps. "Ngh!" It's enough to floor a fellow, having his innermost bits laid out for all to see, and certainly the Holmeses are not known for their lack of attention to detail!

"But, really, to continue to the point here. Absolutely not, Mr Bond," Papa says, at last turning his attention back to the real threat in the room: James Bond. "The latest 'M' and the Minister are fully unaware, which is to say they've not a clue, nor does anyone in any officially appointed or elected capacity. Indeed, that would be entirely unwise and completely contrary to the Plan."

"The…Plan?" James prompts, keeping a wilting Q close clamped to his side. "And what might that entail, exactly? This Plan."

"Oh, but!"

'The Plan' is clearly worthy of capitalization, and trust James to realize it.

"I say..." Q parts his lips, relief leading him to slump even more against the comforting warmth of James's shoulder, and prepares to explain it. Or at least give a go at wrapping rational words about the whole sodding ball of wax, as it's a bit convoluted, but Papa forestalls him.

"The Plan was to free up my dear wife from all her ties to the MI6, Mr Bond, and thus also allow her a reasonably safe retirement, naturally," he replies, all traces of mirth erased by a seriously beetled set of eyebrows turned dead centre on James's answering smirk. "Case in point? Double-Ought-Seven, you specialize in resurrection, do you not? Then you're aware precisely how very useful it can be, playing dead. We merely took full advantage of the perfect opportunity. Which, please note, you and that right wanking bastard Silva were so kind as to provide us, ta very much."

"…I see."

"And when I say 'we', Mr Bond, the pronoun indicates there was certainly a conspiracy," Papa, ever mercurial, twinkles at James. "But very much kept to the Family, naturally, and posing not the merest risk to our beloved Queen and Country."

"Hmm."

Q gargles wordlessly, just a bit, catching sight of his boyfriend's face. To his right, Sherlock inhales sharply, a great stertorous sniff up that familiar old snoot, and taps a shiny toe tip loudly upon the carpet. "Boring!" he mutters, and none too softly, which earns him a swift kick in the shin from his doctor friend.

My, to his credit, contents himself with a mere folding of his perfectly suited arms 'cross his broader chest and issuing a low-grade glare at Papa.

Mummy sighs, rolling her eyeballs in a very speaking manner at all of them.

"Oh, do get on with it," she orders. "The goose is cooling!"

"It's all alarmingly simple, so easy a ninny could see through it, really." Nodding, Papa carries on with it quite happily, eyes trained upon James with rapier sharpness. "Which is precisely why I was of the opinion that all the super-intelligent high muckety-mucks over at MI6 would overthink it and instantly assume the worst. As indeed they did."

Which statement of Papa's actually explicates very little, really, but James somehow manages to look very deep and knowing, nonetheless. What is completely amazing to Q is that neither of his elder brothers has uttered a real peep, though he can certainly hear Sherlock's sharp intake of breath next to him, as well as discern the almost audible roll of Mycroft's own squinty eyeballs.

"Oh, indeed?" James remarks. He raises a brow at Papa. "Do go on. This is all rather fascinating. You must share all the details, sir. I'd very much like to know how you managed it."

"Hah!" Papa waves him off with a grin. "Immaterial, Bond! That hardly matters now, does it—after the fact?"

"Hmm, still…" James peers at Papa obstinately. "I am curious, sir."

"Bag of blood."

Q once again readies himself to fill the breach, but no, it's apparently up to the doctor amongst them to explain further. John Watson smiles genially at the little knot of tense Holmeses and strolls forward, the DI valiantly attempting to disguise a terribly cheesy grin just behind him. Q frowns briefly at him, sorting it; apparently My has really gone completely arse-over-kettle for his copper.

"Freeze it, wrap it well, and tuck it under the armpit for when it is needed. And there you have it—death on demand, as it were. Quite convincing, I must say." John subjects Sherly to a brief hard stare. "I should know. Trust me, Bond.

"Hardly," James swivels about to regard Sherly's companion. "You must be joking, John! I think I of all people should recognize a dead person when I see one! And no pulse on her, no heartbeat and no respiration. Not to mention M here was clearly bleeding out; in the final throes of it, actually. That's a bit more than a simple bag of blood can account, sorry. Try again, will you? The other's got bells on."

"Well! What an excruciating waste of time all this is!"

Finally Sherlock can't stand it. Q closes his eyes with a huff, deeply anxious his idiotically impatient elder sibling will cock it all up, even though Dr Watson has his mouth already open and is ready to carry on, no doubt to issue some further soothing words of explanation.

"It's all very simple, even for a utter moron, Bond," Sherly snarls, barely restrained from pacing by the doctor's one foot, suddenly planted firmly upon Sherly's. "Obvious blood trail aside, the breath control, the power of willful focus and the meretricious use of a compress at a major pulse point explains it all—why, even a infant could accomplish the same exact result, were one so stupid as to try! And I know for fact even you, 007, have exercised the learnt ability to control the basic signs of life, your vitals, that is. Plus, I know for fact _I_ have, just as successfully—ack! Now, now, John, I did apologize for that!" He interrupts himself to subtly step aside from the heel John is grinding into his big toe and glares down at his visibly irate lover. "Again and again and again, too! You can hardly bring that up now; it's not fair!"

Somehow, and in a rather miraculous manner, this seems to break the tension in the room, Sherly and John's antics.

"Sherlock! Don't you dare stand there and sound so proud of yourself. You did that exact same to _me_ , you great ninny!"

John Watson can be quite fierce when he wishes; Q cracks an involuntary grin, sniggering. At his elbow he hears James swallow back the barest hint of a laugh. Still, it's always pleasant to be reminded that Sherly has got himself a quite stern minder in his doctor friend—the silly old sod, he's always been in need of one, certainly, so it can all be accounted for as a 'good thing'. And especially at this moment, when Mummy and James have yet to truly sort it.

"Now, John. John, remember, I did apologize, after. At least seventeen times now and still counting, John!"

"Oh, no! Sherlock, you can apologize all you like, you great arse, but it hardly changes anything!"

"Oh, now, _please_. All that ancient history and side-plotting aside, Bond," Mycroft interrupts the developing contretemps blandly, and earns himself an approving nod from Mummy by doing so. "Do be reasonable. This is naught but a game we have all of us played out at one time or another and Mummy's life was at stake, so you can hardly blame her. And yes, it was a bit brutal, I admit, at least for Mummy's most favourite of her upper-level operatives, which was of course _you_ , Bond. But, as the Bard says, all's well that ends well, none of us got caught out in the process and the Plan followed through most beautifully, just as forecasted. I say we should bless dear Mummy for her quick thinking under pressure and that you, sir, should keep mum over this business with Mummy, simply resign yourself to having been fooled like all the rest of them and p'raps even feel a bit of gratitude for being included in the know, even if it's well after the fact. Besides, I must admit I should hardly like to be counted a traitor, not for conspiring to aid my own mother."

"Thank you, darling."

"Oh, pish, Mycroft. Do cease blathering on," Sherly grumbles. "And cease your pointless scolding, do. The man here has definitely twigged it at last and it's bloody dinner time!

"Shut it, Sherly; I'm not through yet. I especially wanted to pass on the lauds to you, Bond, in particular, for providing an absolutely honorable, entirely unassailable first-hand witness to Mummy's purported passing, knowingly or not. Old 'M's' death cannot ever be in question." My inclines his head regally and claps James on the shoulder, which instantly gives Q the willies. 'Thanks to you."

"Did I, now?" Seemingly James Bond is just as capable as My is of going all po-faced and inscrutable; he shrugs off My's hand as if it were nothing. "Cheers, then. Glad to be of service, Ma'am."

"But whatever and however it happened and passing by on who did what to whom," My concludes a bit desperately, throwing up his hands to the air, as it's clear James is not exactly complaisant with the matter, even if he's not simply up and shot someone in a fit of pique. "It's done with, the Plan. That particular goose is cooked, yes? And very well done, I still claim; done to a positive turn. Mummy's been ever so pleased to be finally at leisure to return to her beloved apiaries."

"Ah. Apiaries, M?" James cocks an enquiring eyebrow at Mummy, tilting his stern jaw mockingly. "Making use of the hive mind in entirely differing circumstances, I see. How impressive. You always were clever. So very, very clever, it appears."

"Gack!" Q freezes, wary as all hell, and clutches at James's arm, scrabbling down with key-calloused fingertips, in a bid to distract the man and turn that nasty glint in his eyes to a softer glow. "Now, please, _please_ don't start up again, James! For the bloody love of god, we've only just barely calmed down, all of us! And it's _Christmas_!"

"And I'd quite like to go at my dinner now, you fool," Sherly sticks his oar in, apparently unabashed by John Watson's beady eye and hovering heel. "Cold goose is appalling, Bond, and congealed mash worse. Heinous, don't you know?"

"Oh! My dear bees." Mummy laughs, trotting forward to take up one of James's hands and squeezing it familiarly. "Hardly that, Bond. It's a hobby, and one I'd missed greatly whilst Silva was running about, all loose cannon and blowing far too many valuable things to kingdom come, including you, remember? And yes, of course _bees_. Bees are lovely creatures and we have much need of them. Just as," Mummy gallantly answers the arched angle of James's blond eyebrow with one of her own, contrapuntally. "We all have a great and dire need of our Majesty's agents."

"Hmm!" Papa—as always—has to snatch up the final word on a subject, any subject. "And especially our dear Baby here. Isn't that _right_ , son? It's all good."


	9. Chapter 9

 

" **Oi**! Enough of this All-Seeing Pater nonsense, Papa! Come on, come  _on_!" Sherly shouts out, showing the whites of his eyes as he barrels off and the dining room is taken at a charge by the pack of Holmeses and their assorted plus-ones.

"Oh, my dears! Here you all are at last," the Holmes Family minder-in-chief exclaims happily. "And here I was, fretting over Ma'am's lovely goose!"

Even Q has to admit the Holmes dining room of a Christmas is a fearsomely festive view, complete with the smiling housekeeper bustling about lifting covers off steaming platters and the rather elderly Jenson from the village doing his best to buttle. A view which is mostly of the overflowing of the table with expansive foodstuffs, drink and greenery, and quite exactly the amount of sheer exuberant waste of resources Q expects to see. As his Papa always goes all out, being a complete giddy git over any even remotely celebratory occasion. Everyone chatters away, settling into dinner, but there's one thing Q thinks is good, and that's very good indeed: James doesn't ever stop touching him, not once.

No earbuds are necessary. There's instead a constant murmur in Q's ear. James, of course, commenting on this and remarking on that, chiding Q to eat a little more, and then to pass the salt, and Q's finding that he's surprisingly comfortable in his customary seat—provided that familiar faintly Scot's accented tone continually addresses him, and that certain heavy hand lays possessively across his thigh beneath his serviette.

He squirms a bit, still, impatient to be done with it, particularly when My takes up the topic of James's potential retirement—as if that'll ever happen! Q scoffs internally.

"Never happen; give over, do," Sherly chimes in, between shoveling mouthfuls into his maw, and Q grins and offers up the sapient git a companionable wink.

James snorts at My's wheedling, a sound which Q—an admittedly well-lubricated Q, as Papa is the one doing all the pouring—finds unutterably attractive.

And for once—in a bloody blue moon, a great big cheddary one—nothing else bloody explodes, not even Q's middle brother. Well, Q would like to say that, but…damn, but if Sherly doesn't have to up and fiddle with the bits-and-pieces of holiday décor Mummy has spread about the surface of the table.

Right, then. Nothing explodes, much, excepting the Christmas crackers, naturally. And Papa has clearly gone and rigged those.

But, after dinner?

Q finds himself drawn inevitably to Papa's Command Centre, which doubles as his and Mummy's private armory. More like, he's dragged there, press-ganged by his elder brothers into watching the cameras avidly, right along with everyone else, including Papa and the DI. The postprandial cuppa of Earl Grey is only of the slightest comfort.

Q squirms, all at once struck by the fear James will change his mind and decide he'd really rather not be involved with a flat-out liar.

"Dear one, my littlest Babycakes," Papa remarks comfortably, giving Q a pat on his head in passing. He adjusts a monitor to zero in on Mummy and James, standing poised over the counter area by the huge double-bowled stainless sink, the one Papa has always claimed could double as a bathtub in a pinch. Mummy is deep into the washing up and James is wielding a tea towel like a pro. "They'll be fine, the two of them together. All good. You mustn't fret."

"Hrhm," Q huffs and buries his nose in his tea. He isn't so certain about that. Supposedly they've retreated for port and cigars; Q shudders at the thought and sips his tea with alacrity, an eye to My's discreet slurping up of Papa's finest. Heathens!

Meanwhile the cameras are going about their business, revealing all.

"Ma'am—M," James remarks quietly to Mummy, having finally been allowed the opportunity to catch her alone. He's been helping clear away like a true gentleman, disdaining all offers of aid from both the doctor and the detective inspector. Or, as Q thinks of them, the other, ahem, potential 'sons', by way of come and not by blood. Q is fairly certain Mummy marks the recent swell in the numbers of Holmeses and half-Holmeses as a blessing and not a curse. "Your motives, of course, are unassailable—indeed, were unassailable. But."

"But, 007?"

"'Bond' please, Ma'am; I've got a leg over your youngest, you know? Hardly time to stand on protocol. And I'm not your agent, not anymore."

"Hardly, Bond. Go on, then. What is it?"

"I must note that I don't much appreciate your methods. I feel a bit miffed, Ma'am, to put it bluntly. You could've trusted me."

Mummy giggles. Q flinches and sits forward in his chair, straining to catch every nuance on both beloved faces. "Oh, no!" he whispers, his knuckles tightening on his cup handle. "Oh, no, James, please don't!"

"Seriously, Ma'am." James is nothing if not doggedly stubborn. He sets his jaw and eyes Mummy spuriously. "I'd not have betrayed you, never in all this time. And I wouldn't have then, either."

"…James." Mummy begins tentatively, and it's the first Q's ever seen Mummy falter. "James, you must adm—"

"'James', Ma'am?" Q's boyfriend cocks an eyebrow. "Familiar, aren't you? I feel as though I hardly know you. Apparently I never truly did. '007' wasn't it? Or 'Bond', in a pinch, when I wasn't active in the field. Never  _James_."

"Heh!" Mummy issues another small spate of the giggles, her eyes twinkling up at James's set expression. "Go on with you, then. I never said I was a poor field agent, did I? I was really very good, now that I think back on it. Certainly one who could keep up a poker face with the best of them. But, that aside, James, do consider. It was all because of my youngest, naturally—Baby. For Charlemagne's sake, if for nothing else. You claim you've a leg over him, which I cannot deny, can I? Well! You can't then logically remain '007' in  _this_  house, James. My littlest one simply won't stand for it, and I could hardly be  _M_  and  _Mummy_  both, not after I noticed what was between you. Didn't even want it, in the end. My husband was absolutely correct, as always—he ever is, the pernicious old sod. So, I'm afraid for you it's to be all  _John_  and  _Greg_ and  _James_ , from this day forward, not to mention  _Sherly_  and _My_. And I shall of course become your 'Mummy', James, and no more of this 'Ma'am' shite, you bloody obstinate cuss. And you'll come along to Christmas, and Easter, and all else, as long as you and my Baby are together. As _is_  expected. As is…" Here, Mummy lost all remnants of mirth and positively glared at James. "Proper."

"I am not  _little_!" Q can't help but hiss at the cameras and the view of his oblivious Mummy, practically backing James Bond into a metaphorical corner and holding the grand knife of maternally-inflicted guilt at his throat. His brothers, the filthy wankers, only chuckle; sod them! "And for gawd's sake, Mummy! Put a little pressure on him, why don't you? Why not just run him off with the fireplace poker? Oh! This is horrible! Horrible!"

"Fool," Sherly denounces scathingly. "Look to the evidence."

"Oh, he's right, Baby," My just has to add. "Your beau's not budging, not a whit."

"Dearest, settle your nerves," Papa adds adjusting a camera. "Look to your James's face. It's all there, everything clear as day."

"As is, James," and Mummy sends James a very stern look. "My right, as a mum. Did you want your most favorite Quartermaster to be an orphan in reality? Because I can't quite accept that, dear, cheers."

"Oh, god, no."

On grainy black-and-white camera, James claps a damp palm to his forehead, a universal sign of frustration. The tea towel goes flying off screen.

"What, then?"

"No! M!" he exclaims, scowling at her through his fingers and the trailing corner of the dishtowel he's holding. "All right, I suppose…I suppose I can understand it. Your reasoning. At least, I think I can."

"That's well enough then, James."

"And this…this thing you suggest, how familial. How…very… odd of you, inviting me. Must I? Really? Family dinners are hardly my bailiwick, Ma'am."

"Oh, you must," Mummy twinkles. "My baby boy will insist, James." She giggles again; she's in right high spirits this evening, and absolutely in the mood to purr at poor James. "And he will insist and of course you shall trot along, and grow to like it, too, I don't doubt. Consider it the final order of an 'M', Mr James Bond—my last testament, if you will. And do heed me or else I shall sic all the rest of my boys on you."

For a split second Q catches his breath and holds it, entirely tense.

"No! Anything but that, please! But…very well. You win, er, 'Mummy'." Bloody but unbowed, James finally relents, and even smiles at Mummy. The tea towel returns to view as he flourishes it, taking up a plate Mummy presses into his hands. "Agh! No—no, I simply can't do it.  _Ma'am_."

"Hmph! Bloody poppycock, James! Of course you manage, even at your age. That's  _Mummy_  to you, idiot boy. Now, speaking of boys, and boys together, what about a civil partnership, James? Have you and Baby considered—?"

"Oh, gawd no, Mummy!" Q can only be grateful Papa cuts the cameras off with a decisive finger tap. "Not that!"

"Right, then," he says. "Seems quite sufficient—no homicidal agents to worry over, not under my roof, at least. Off you all lot go, back to your canoodling. Baby, you'd better bolt off and rescue your young man immediately. I can hardly help you with that, not from down here."

"Oh! Fuckity, fuckity, fuck! Yes, Papa! On it!"

Q goes, and at a gallop.

 


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mycroft quotes the Bard, but is that the final word? James Bond doesn't believe so, sorry.

"Beautiful boy," James says, strong-arming a breathless Q through the doorway of his old bedroom and right up against the closest available wall. The palm cupping Q's wildly mussed hair tightens and protects his spinning noggin from taking a hard rap on the ancient plaster as he pants. James is not panting; he's perfectly composed. "My beautiful, vexing, entirely too secretive boy, come here. I've had quite enough of waiting to lay my hands on you."

He strips Q of his dinner jacket by way of planting his pursed lips smack square on Q's parted ones, impaling Q with a hot delving tongue to distract him completely and employing both hands to tug and to shove.

"Jame'th!"

When he's allow to speak again Q pays very little heed to the fact he's well on the way to being rendered bare-arsed naked, he's so caught up in the vicious glitter in those icy eyes. As Q's all too much aware he's landed in the soup, that he's sunk hip-deep in the Land of Trouble, and that with a capital 'T'!

"Jame'th, plea'th! I never wanted to, but I had to, don't you  _thee_?"

Q gulps, flailing a little until both wrists are captured and held fast to the wall above his head.

"Jame'th! Jame'th, it was Mummy—Mummy, Jame'th!"

Q's rather piteous protest is roundly ignored.

"A fucking pox on your Mummy, Q! Should probably throttle you, rather, for hiding your bloody devious  _Mummy_  from me, but I find I'd rather fuck you silly, instead. Now shut up!"

James gnaws his way down Q's neck, deftly removing Q's skewed tie and working buttons and cuffs as he goes. His belt buckle comes undone with a tiny 'tink!' and his trousers hit the carpeted floor with a menacing little thud.

"Oh! Oh, James!" Q shivers in his socks and hand-sewn tasseled loafers, but has absolutely no urge to even think of scarpering off—an angry James is a very sexy beast indeed and Q is by no means an idiot. "Oh,  _fuck_."

"Yes, fuck. Got it in one, Quartermaster. Might still wring your pretty little neck, after," James growls, nipping an earlobe with a careful canine. He grabs at Q's buttocks and squeezes, then delivers a passing slap. "'Liar, liar, pants on fire.'"

"Oi!" Q yelps. "Jame'th!"

"But I'll have your bad little bum first, Quartermaster, riding my cock, cheers for that. Shag some bloody common sense into you, maybe, if I'm lucky. Though I don't know if that's likely, reckless little twat."

"Oh, ah? Th-Sh-sha- _shagging me_? Tha'th  _much_ better. Capital idea. Mmm, ye'th, please."

Q nods his head eagerly, hardly hearing the threats, his careening brain centred all at once on the promised shag in the offing. Because, yes,  _obviously,_ a shagging delivered by an angry James was so much more promising than death via asphyxiation at the hands of an irate 007.

" _Please_ , James. Whatever you say, James; blame me all you like, if you like, but  _do_ shag me. I want it—I want it so much!"

"Of course I shall shag you, little loon; never doubt it," James asserts, finally allowing Q the use of his wrists back, but only so he can poke a solid finger into Q's narrow breastbone. "You know what? You bloody Holmeses are all certifiable. Lunatics, every last one of you, what with your bloody mad Plan and your bloody mad Papa—and now poor old Watson and that green-eyed copper your elder brother's got his mitts on have been hooked in as well. Clever as a den of canny foxes, though, the lot of you. I'll give you that much, at least."

"But—but! Mum—"

"Shut it, I said."

One broad hand wrenches Q's lean hips forward off the wall as James divests him of his pants. Q's cock springs forth, unimpeded and very, very much interested in the rough treatment. Q moans, closing his eyes, when fingertips dance along the blunt damp knob-end of his prick.

"I was completely convinced your precious 'Mummy' was dead, Q. And if you fooled  _me_ …well!"

"Ah, that." Q raises his lids reluctantly; he'd much rather concentrate on the groping he's getting. "Yes, well…"

"Well?" James snaps. "Well, what?"

"Oh…ahhhh…" Q stares into the bright blue gaze so intent on him, warily watching as they fall to skittering across his rapidly goose-pimpling skin. "Uh,um?"

"Thought you'd like that, Q," James murmurs. He snaps to attention instantly, palming Q's bits. "Scrambles the thought processes, just a bit, doesn't it? Did you by chance use that on me, all this time? Wanker."

"No…no? 'Least—ah, James!—don't' think I did…erm, maybe? Ah, James!" Q can almost feel the heat of them, those eyes; he can certainly feel the feather-light brush of James's fingers. It's searing, and he never wants to lose it, that focus. "Ah! As to that, James? Clever's not a bad thing. Oh yes—just there! Oh! Ooooh!"

"You were saying, Q?"

"Um…was I? Oh, right, I was, wasn't I? What I meant was us Holmeses and Co being so clever saved Mummy's life when Silva was after her, and if it hadn't been him, there'd have been sure to have been others, after."

Q rushes on, speaking. He thinks he's speaking, but the oxygen's a bit scarce to the brain and the larynx, at this point. He does know he's only a got a limited span of attention, and he knows it, too—he's in James's capable hands now and that leads always to a rather ruinous state of rationality. Thus he's blathering, and it falls out of his mouth in a heap, rather.

"She was living on borrowed time and in far too many ways, James. And there was only a little collusion involved, in the end. I didn't lie to you—or, at least not too, too much. I just…I just never said, and you? You never asked, nor thought to—that was the beauty of Papa's Plan. Omission's pretty clever, too. Not a bad tactic at all."

"No, it isn't."

James is still irked, but he's also mellowing, just a bit, as Q sways, sharp features gone soft with longing. "...Ah?"

"Clever is a lovely thing to be, pet. A bald-faced liar, however, is definitely another." James pinches at his hips, nudging his own into the gap between Q's thighs. "Come on," he says, coaxingly. "Step out of your shoes, my beautiful boy. Bed, now."

"M'kay," Q nods, toeing off his tasseled loafers with alacrity. His toes twist about, attacking his socks as he does a crane-legged dance, complying as best as he can. "I—ahem! I  _am_  sorry, you know? I really am."

He's spun about as soon as they're off and thrust down summarily upon the duvet. Face first. Which doesn't suit Q, not at all.

"Are you now?"

Q wrestles himself about, coming up pink-cheeked to confront an Agent of the Crown—who happens to be his lover. 007, licensed to kill. Aka, James, licensed to fuck Q mindless. It's the lover he's babbling at, Q knows, and hopefully it's the lover who's listening.

"Yes! I'd have told you ages ago, if I could. But I couldn't, of course."

James follows, climbing over Q, straddling his very much interested groin, and promptly takes both of Q's wrists in one hand and pins them above his head. Again. It's…it's rather lovely. Q finds he quite likes James taking charge of him, so he grins. And p'raps also blushes. Just a little.

"And for the record," Q feels he must add, terribly turned on. "I admire clever. I  _am_ clever; we all are. You are, too."

"Oh, I noticed." His specs are lifted off the bridge of his nose, gently, and cast aside in the general area of Q's bedside table. "You've a kink, Q. Hard to miss, really."

"You can't say you don't like it too, James," Q points out petulantly. He's being teased and not so subtly. "You leave me puzzles, at HQ."

"Mmm," James hums, eyeing a naked Q up and down with an assessing eye, but not touching him further with that very capable free hand that hovers above Q's chest. It leaves his nipples aching tremendously, and sends all the blood in Q's brain rushing down toward his bollocks. "Clever aside, clearly you've been thinking of me, pet. You seem, ah. Enthusiastic. Did you miss me while I was making nice with your Mummy?"

"Yes, yes," Q replies, with a tiny wriggle. "Very much so." James is still completely garbed and the suit material rubs against Q's more than half erect cock, chafing it in a delicious sort of manner. "All night long, James. I missed you through dinner; you half drove me mad, all right? Touching me, whispering…Now, please? You'd said you'd shag me before throttling me. Get on with it!"

"I will do, never fear, pet," James grins. "But I think you're going to have to work for it a little. I'm not particularly pleased with you, you realize?"

"…No?"

"No. But that doesn't mean I shan't be, not if you cooperate, Q."

"When," Q swallows hard and gazes up at him, this fellow whose very molecules determine the happiness of his own, in a spinny, gravity-bound sort of manner. Like James is the sun, and Q's his own personal moon. "When you say 'cooperate', James, just what exactly do you mean by it?"

"Oh," James smiles, and it's feral and hard and yet also loving, so Q takes heart, once again. "You'll see. You'll see."

Q is fucked into the mattress—his old familiar 'smells of boyhood' mattress—by an angry secret agent, nearly fully clothed—the first time.

The second, they're both undressed, and Q loses his grip on reality for a little while after, he's just so happy. And James gathers him close, and it's oddly nostalgic—Mummy, probably, would be very pleased, if she knew.

Thank all the powers that be she doesn't.

No—cancel that. She likely does, thanks to Papa. His bloody cameras are everywhere, really. My gets it from someone and the apple falls not far from the bloody tree.

QW sighs and puts it all as far from his waking mind as he can, possibly. Holmeses will be Holmses, till the bloody cows cry 'Home!'

It's' after the third time Q considers sleeping, actually sleeping, which was not a tradition he upheld on Christmas Eve 'ere this day—erm, night. For it's well after midnight in Q's ancient childhood retreat and James makes a few dark muttering-and-highly-unflattering comments as to Mummy, for he's not through with that, nor yet through with the 'bloody mad Holmeses' in general. And then, too, regarding Papa's Grand Plan, and all the rest of that business.

The muttering goes on for hours, as they individually seek sleep—and fail. They should be exhausted, but Q knows James, similar to him, is still a bit high-strung. Events, indeed, were rather unsettling. Mummy, for one.

For another, who it is James has been shagging in the past, which is of particular interest to Q. Coming in after his own brother and his other brother's paramour is a bit of a set-down, and he's not certain how he feels about it, hours later.

Possibly—probably?—not so good.

Q takes some of the emotional shrapnel James is throwing off as well—mostly a few filthy imprecations about 'canny fucking deceivers' and the like, but he shrugs them off as nothing much. James is venting; he's allowed, as it's been a bit of a rough evening. Q only smiles, lazy as a sated boa constrictor, and wraps his limbs a little more securely about his James.

_His_  James, undeniably. There's that, if there's nothing else. Not that there's nothing else, as of course there's plenty, and Mummy's attempt to pin James down as to a set date for a civil ceremony is a huge portion of that.

"You're very good," Q remarks, out of nowhere, abruptly hopeful, in the midst of James still muttering on blackly over little porcelain dogs and 'bloody Mummy'. "Very…good."

"Oh, am I?"

"Yes. I think so. Considered opinion: James Bond—very good. You, James Bond, pass muster."

Q would dearly like to say aloud how it is he actually feels for James, but it's late. It's so late it's early. And it's rather uncomfortable, the situation. It's Christmas Day, and love's in the air, as it were, but it's hardly sporting to go shoving exactly how much—and even Q doesn't really know, can't really gauge—it is he loves this blighter who's just fucked him silly, thrice.

"And how is it I shall strive to rate a 'brilliant' or maybe a mere 'excellent', brat?"

James abandons his lingering vexation just like that, quick as anything; he's already on and ready for the next thing. As to the next thing, or at least Q hopes it's the next thing, is more lolling about in his old bed and more 'very good' shagging, he's more than pleased with that, should it turn up. James may be Q's senior by quite a little but his redaction time is amazing.

Q grins into the dim light. There's lamps lit outside and fairy lights too, and it's a moonlit evening, but still…quite dark, as it's three in the morning. And the dark is kind to a blushing boy. Though he's not a boy, not by a long shot. Not when he feels like this.

"You should simply say, Q. What you want. So much more effective, love," James urges. "Gives me a target, right? I do like those."

"Hmm," Q muses, very much aware his eyes are flirting. Very much aware he's got his hand on James's limp cock. Very much aware, also, that there's likely others in the Holmes household going at the business of fucking, or perhaps talking, and perhaps also managing just as awkwardly as he. Clearly, he thinks, the only solution is to try harder. This is important. He will, or expire trying, he so swears!

"I think if I provide you the perquisite equipment, we could possible engage in another field test—see how it all works out, yes?"

He pulls James's wandering hand off his chest and redirects to his bum. James gives him a fond little slap, smiling. It stings no more so than the last one as they fold into one another, and there's all that lovely skin, nicely shared, just what Q's been craving. "And then I'll decide."

"Will you?"

Q yawns; they've already had three field tests: best of four is clearly valid. "In the morning. Sample of three. No—four, sorry. Validity, James, soul of."

"I see." James tucks his head against Q's, shaking it in comprehension, as always. Q so adores that, that particular aspect. "Interval testing, then. Elapsed time. Looking to quantify my longevity, then. Imagine that."

"Yes," Q grins, and sloppily as it's against the press of a firmly insistent set of lips. "Exactly that. Now, and then later and then…after Christmas presents. Five times…maybe six? Seven?"

"Oh, now you're showing that family tendency to madness, Charlemagne Holmes," James shoots back, every ready. "Take a damper, pet. All washed up, remember?"

"Oh, no," Q comes back, instantly. "Not you—never you. You? You are perfect. The parfait knight."

"Hmm. Is that so?"

"It is. Don't deny. I'm your Quartermaster."

"So you are."

"Yes. For always, now."

"Yes, always."

It's brilliant. It's so much changed up from even a moment before now. Q's his bloody confidence back, he is absolutely flirting like a mad thing with James, and is also rather amazed it comes so naturally to him. Flirting has never before been a part of Q's repertoire.

"Total time for test is twenty four hours," he reminds James, and rather pedantically. He's fairly certain James finds 'pedantically' sexy, any more. "And counting. As of now."

Hah! Must be the correct venue taken with correct subject, as he's never been successful before at it, either.

"Ah?"

"Yes, so. In the morning, as it will be Christmas Day, finally. My last gift, James. I want it."

"Presents," James smiles. Nips Q's chin. "You want…presents. More presents, more gifts. From me. And I already didn't murder your bloody Mummy, Q. That was a gift. A rare one."

"Yes, of course," Q sighs and turns to wraps his long legs about James, lovely James. "It was, much appreciated, ta. And tea. Tea is first. Tea—is paramount."

"Naturally."

"Nothing before tea. Martinis are for later, and they'll be shaken, not stirred. As you like them, precisely."

"Oh? Really now?"

"Positively," Q giggles. "I'll make them myself. I've learnt how, recently."

"See that you do." James pulls Q close and cuddles him, and it's—in its own way, in its own peculiar manner, it's even better than being buggered senseless against any surface. "As I'll be counting on it. Partner."

"Ngh- **ahhh**?" Q had been nearing drowsy, oh, so pleasantly so. "Ooop!"

Well, then. He  _had_.

Now, he nearly swallows his own tongue in excitement.

Opens his mouth to say—

"No," James orders instantly. " _No_ , Q. Not tonight. Go to sleep, my beautiful boy. We'll not be speaking to that until morning. I can only take so much excitement. Three times, Q—three! Up in years, you know? Have a bit of mercy, pet. Go to sleep.  _Right now_."

Q would say later he'd barely slept a wink, but he'd be lying. Lying, like a bloody rug.

It's all on Mummy, finally, and then Papa, as well, and James is left eyeing the ring Gran'mere Violet had left to Q, solely to one Charlemagne Vernet Holmes, for presentation one day to his beloved. It glitters in the box and the diamond is square cut and very suited for a man who wears thousand pound suiting.

"Oh, erm," James hedges. "Must I? Hardly Christmas, is it, Q?  _Q_?"

Q has the last word, forestalling even his bloody brother.

"Yes. You must. Please do. And please, James?"

"Yes?"

"Never return it me. I want you." He swallows, the lump in his throat huge, and it is rather hard on the knees, a man's weakest point, when one falls down upon them, prostrate. "I want you to keep it—oh!  _Please_ , Jame'th?"

"…Yes?"

"Keep it  _safely_."

It _is_  Christmas, it really is. Morning's finally come; there's wrapping paper everywhere and all the Holmeses, yes,  _all of them_ —Sherly and My and John and Greg, Mummy and Papa both—leaning in to listen with avid eager ears, though no one quite so obviously as Sherly. And…and there's a light in the blue eyes that melts all the ice to nothing, and sweeps Q's heart along with it.

"Oh," James nods. Stuffs the ring on his finger with no hesitation. It shan't explode, it shan't do anything at all out of the ordinary, but Q cannot but hope it keeps James safe. "I will. That I will.  _Baby_."

Safe  _home_.

And sound. For always.

"Oh, god," he sighs, and falls boneless into James's lap, completely unstrung. "Oh, gawd! Thank you."

Of course—and naturally? That is exactly the moment when Papa explodes the Christmas tree.

"Oh, well done, you!" Papa crows, ducking tinsel shrapnel. "Good show, I say!" The antique German glass balls explode in a positive miracle of tiny sparks; it's really quite fantastic, if terribly destructive. Mummy groans. "Brilliant!"

"Fuck's sake, John," Sherly snarls, flinging himself over his flat mate in a mad bid to fend off the smouldering ribbons. "Can we please go home?  _Right now_?"

"Sherlock!"

" _My_? Mycroft Holmes, I did  **not**  sign up for this—" The silver-haired DI voices his complaint, and My drags him down in a silencing kiss, thankfully. "Domestic disturbance! Oof! You crazy wank—"

"Now, darling—"

"Boys.  **BOYS**!" bellows Mummy, and everyone freezes. " _Boys_." Even Papa. "…Boys. Enough."

"Ahem," Papa ventures, after a long silent moment. "Sorry, darling. High spirits, you know."

"Yes, of course. Bloody Vernet genes, darling. I  _do_  know, sadly. Oh,  _how_  I do know," she laments. "Bugger."

"Yes, that!" Q squeals, giggling. "Bugger, James, and for always. With me? Maybe?"

"Yes, dear."

Q admits he might be a bit giddy. Just a bit. A wee little, as James might say, though he cannot imagine James ever saying anything of the sort, Scots or no.

And? And it's another Holmes Christmas, and yet it is entirely new. All of it.

"Er, Ma'am?" James asks, after the tree's been put out and the sparks stamped out by a horde of Holmeses and their plus-ones. "Ma'am, is this the usual, here? On the holidays?"

"It's Mummy, James. How many times must I? And yes—yes, it is. You'll grow accustomed, I'm sure. Or not—that's why I have my dear bees."

"Oh. Ah."

There's another long pause. Q frowns.

"Brilliant."

Q smiles. From ear to ear, and it's is brilliant, yet it is.

Yes, it is—brilliant is the word. And brand new is the term; things will never be the same again. Q shakes with laughter, his head buried stubbornly in James's lap. Clearly, Q's adventure with James has only just begun. And it may not be Christmas, or mayhap it is it, but it's certainly something wonderful.

And it's  _his_ , Baby's. All his very own.

Finally.

**End**


End file.
